You remember it wrong. RJ introduced his first overt lesbian AS in LOC (Galina). We started to see WT culture didn't seem bothered one bit with same sex relationships with Cadsuane and Verin and that Cairhienin and Seafolk Verin caught.

Then came NS and an opportunity to show us the WT culture among advanced Accepted, without all the stuff that made the sejour of Nynaeve/Elayne/Egwene completely atypical and unusual. That's when RJ talked of pillow-friends, and between the lines it was pretty obvious what it meant, but it wasn't explicit.

It's after New Spring that RJ got questions about the fact he had lesbians but no gay men, and he answered that he did have some (he was referring to a mention of a gay male servant at the WT...) but he had had no opportunity at this point to bring it up.

I think the reason why he started having fun with pillow-friends all over the place is those big debates among fans that the PF weren't actually having sex, which seems to have amused RJ no end.

I brought this up on Wotmania and RJ picked it up and answered with a big chuckle in his blog that of course pillow-friends got it on and had a lot of fun beneath the sheets, and then gave his explanations about raging hormones and closed environments. etc.

The next book that came out (KOD), mentions of pillow-friends and same-sex relationships, and this time pretty explicit, were all over the place, but then this was the book in which it became clear the end of the world was imminent, and RJ had tons of characters react by marrying or having sex like bunnies.

RJ had claimed that he had male characters noted down as gay in his notes, and the notes proved RJ had been telling about this Brandon saw many entries in which male characters were identified as gays. He's the one who sort of promised insisting readers to mention some in his books, and one day on Twitter or whatever, he announced he'd found a place to reveal one male character as gay. Brandon cared a lot more than RJ about being PC.