Three things...
First, I was on CBR prior to the outing of Young Iceman. You had a contingent of 'Gayers' there who kept running back-and-forth between CBR and Bendis's Tumblr page trying to get Bendis to make Young Iceman gay. They would pop in to the Iceman Appreciation Thread there and taunt the Iceman fans, bragging about what they were getting Bendis to do to Young Iceman. After they took credit for the whole 'Disney Princess' bit, I took a look at Bendis's Tumblr and what they were posting there. "Have Jean or the Professor read Iceman's mind and tell him he is gay!" "Make him bisexual, they say everyone is!" "Yes, but only as a step to making him FULL GAY!" They were also telling Bendis the Iceman fans in the CBR Iceman Appreciation Thread hated him.
So I messaged Bendis and told him we did NOT hate him, that we had been enjoying his depiction of Young Iceman(what little he did with him). I told him how people were bragging about the things they were getting him to do and just asked him to "please do not change how you write the character because of it". Bendis didn't reply to me directly, but instead posted publicly that "I will not allow anyone to influce how I write a character". I shared with everyone in the Iceman Appreciation Thread what I thought was the good news.
Then Young Jean reads Iceman's mind and tells him that he is gay. He says mabe he is bisexual , they say everyone is. Then she informs him that no, he is "FULL GAY!".
Sigh... So all that wasn't just bad writing on the part of Bendis, it came direly from the trolls at CBR.
Second, fiction is full-to-bursting with straight characters that a large group of fans see as gay/bi/something-other-than-straight. Sometimes it is wish-fulfillment, sometimes it is simply perception. I've been guilty of the latter myself. Perception is a funny thing. I remember when Northstar came out, I felt it was a dodge to avoid the fact he had incestuous feelings for his sister. I didn't want him to have those feelings, it was simply how I saw their relationship...
Bobby Drake, Peter Parker, Johnny Storm, Steve Rogers... all have LARGE segments of fans who have seen them as either bi or outright gay for decades. Same with Dick Grayson and many others at DC. And when writers/artists/editors learn of that, many of them add stuff as jokes and fan service purely for fun, that instead gets taken as proof of something or at least 'ambiguousness', and shapes more opinions in that direction.
I got back into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles few years back because of the cartoon airing at the time and prior to checking out some of the fan-groups I figured there was probably a contiget of fans seeing Mikey as gay, because he's a joker and those characters seem to ALWAYS get that, and also the whole recurring 'Leatherhead' bit. What surprised me was all the people insisting RAPH was gay because as one poster pput it, "He has all the qualities of a woman while being entirely disdainful of women." They had a thread so full of 'proof' it would put the old "Iceman/Steve Rogers" is gay threads at CBR to shame.
Then the show gave Raph a girlfriend and all they could talk about was how betrayed they had been by the show's creators because he was so 'obviously gay'.
Perception. The thing with Iceman is that regardless of anyone's perception, he was created as straight and written as straight for over a half-century of stories. He WAS straight. You will find misquotes by Scott Lobdell, Mike Carey and Marjorie Liu scattered around the internet as 'proof' of it being otherwise, but as I said, they are misquotes. They have all actually said the opposite. The misquotes started with a few people doing it deliberately(I watched some of that happen at CBR) and after a bit people are just repeating what they heard and believing it to be true. The perceptions of a small percentage of fans, vocal though they may be, shouldn't change the reality of who a character actually is. You do that and you not only have chaos, you undermine the ability to perceive the fictional reality as in some way real. Fans stop buying into it. The change to Iceman was a 'jump the shark' moment to a lot of fans, they either now read around his... unreality... or they don't read stuff with him at all.
Third, I am in favor of social justice, and I can't stand so-called 'Social Justice Warriors'. To me someone in favor of social justice is much like a mainstream average christian and an 'SJW' is more like a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. They both take something that should be good and positive and twist it to make it unpalatable to outright toxic.
See, I always thought they strongly hinted Iceman could be gay (or bi)...and a like you say, that was perception. In thinking more about it, I mostly drew my conclusion from the mid-late 90's, when there were subtle hints such as someone (I forget who, in X-Men 19 I think it was) mocking Iceman's failed "relationship" with Opal, and it sort of reading like he can't seem to succeed with ANY woman. But mostly it was the road trip Bobby took with Rogue to confront his (presented as bigoted) dad.
Now, it's pretty much implied Bobby's dad is anti-mutant, but, given X-men have always been an allegory for being misunderstood, outcast, closeted, awkward, puberty, etc etc, it's easy to read into it that Bobby was "closeted" and his father knew/suspected and resented him for it, and Bobby had issues with that. This conversation likely reads like many coming out gay young men must have had with conservative father's in the 90's.
Now, worth mentioning, a few issues later, Graydon Creed has Bobby's father nearly killed to get to Bobby (he was running for office, and the X-Men were infiltrating him, and Bobby was ousted, but his father refused to betray his son).
Again, my takeaway from that is, it as meant to represent gay men who felt their fathers hated them for being gay, and coming to grips with their fathers still ultimately loved them, but just resented their lifestyle. Adding to this was his hospital ridden father's conversation with our favorite Cajun, where (again, consistent with 90's "it's a choice" mentality) Mr.Drake asks Gambit why he choses to be (an out and about) mutant as, he's a handsome, regular LOOKING guy who could pass as normal (non mutant, and, therefore, allegorically, straight).
(complete with some TRUE social justice...a natural, humble realization of injustice)
To me, while the story was about Bobby's tumultuous relationship with his father, and in story, overing being a mutant, it was pretty clear they were alluding to closeted homosexuality. And, it IS as you say, perception, but it's all about subtext.
and by subtext I also mean visually....like, as an artist, myself, I have to say, things are...diliberately done. Such as, uhm...well, I'll let the pic speak for itself.
While this story wasn't Iceman coming out as gay, it easily could have been. And it would have ben far better handled, more justified and earned, than the crap Bendis presented. And Rogue, being his support, was far more caring, and a humble friend, than an arrogant Jean abusing her powers and feeling self righteously entitled into putting him.
