That's before you even get into that Claremont was great at bringing things up and not really addressing them. We're not talking about Hickman, here.
Didn't because he couldn't if he wanted to. It's important to keep "there were relationships that I felt transcended gender" & "I had my own thoughts" in that quote. Those thoughts live in the clear subtext. To outright ignore it, to go back and forth defending that position to your last breath, to only accept clear statements describing sexual labels & on-panel sexual acts at a time when all were banned, says a lot about you as a person.
He says "Never really got into it" as clearly as possible. He is saying it about something that took place in the past. If he was unable to address it then, nothing is stopping him from addressing it clearly now. Instead, he says "Never really got into it."
I totally accept the possibility that one of his thoughts may have been there being something more to that relationship. That said, I also accept it when the writer says "Never really got into it."
It's also worth noting that Shooter and the Comics Code Authority were long gone by the time Claremont penned X-Treme X-Men. He could have addressed that plotline and laid out exactly what "his own thoughts" were. If that was what he thought, what stopped him?
Wasn't Sage in a 3some with Rogue/Gambit?
Oh my is she ever!
Marvel seems to be on diversification crusade. I'm sure they wouldn't resist Storm being confirmed as being bisexual on top of being African American and if she wasn't an X-Woman I'm sure they'd have given her a new solo in All-New Marvel and advertised it as the first solo with a bisexual African American female lead! But alas, she is an x-character and thus isn't allowed to have that level of promotion.
Chris Claremont should write a new Storm ongoing, as he should have been doing from the start... Instead of Storm II it will be called Storm Bi.
From the pages of X-Men Companion (1982)...
I knew I had this somewhere in here... It was just a matter of time before I found it