The article's even less than you'd expect. I'm assuming it's saying older games were open to "mock older gay men" referencing Tingle but labeling him or similar characters as gay is missing the point/joke by a mile. He's meant to be childish, like a parody of Peter Pan, or maybe even a joke at the expense of Link himself (he very much wants to be Link).

As for what the article ACTUALLY says… it's… about Sheik and Tetra, also you can wear female clothes in TOTK.

That's really about it, it's just clickbait. If anything, by saying Zelda being Sheik makes her trans or implying Tetra is queer for not sticking to gender norms only further enforces gender stereotypes.

That being said? Link is meant to be a self insert for players to connect with. By his very design he's meant to be open ended. If you want to be a lil spicy and wear a dress in TOTK or make gay content about the game, that's 100% fine, and your right.

Trying to say the game was somehow always meant to be some sort of queer icon (without even elaborating) is just lazy clickbait, and as stated before, what examples it did use do more harm than good.

To my observation, the "as a gay, everything I relate to for any reason is also gay" behavior seems to be mostly limited to journalism and academia. Is there some sort of "queer theory/criticism" course they're all taking to make them this way?