one paragraph in a book is not the reason for 5e amazing success. It was largely unnecessary and irrelevant, though I do not decry it's existence.
As I posted a long way upthread, without the sort of market research information that only WotC would have it's more-or-less impossible to no how important that paragraph has been to 5e's success.
But I don't know why you say it was unnecessary or irrelevant. WotC clearly though it
helpful, even if not strictly necessary (but in RPG pubishing what
is strictly necessary?) - because they wanted to send a signal about whom
they envisage being present in the fiction of the game. Presumably they wanted to do this because they want that fiction to speak to those people - I imagine for a mixture of reasons, including but not only the desire to have a wide range of people buy their books.
As to irrelevance - I assume you mean
irrelevant to you. (Though oddly you keep posting about it - so do seem to feel it has some relevance to you.) It's clearly not irrelevant to
everyone, because at least one person has posted
in this very thread that the paragraph in question spoke to him (that was [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION], if I'm not misremembering).
don't presume you have the privilege to change how I run mine.
<snip>
A person who fears a group does not stand on the street corner shouting that said group must change to be more inclusive of them.
<snip>
And those people do not then go on campaigns to force themselves into those groups. They create their own groups which hopefully eventually outnumber the previous groups, or the previous group slowly changes it's behavior as a reaction to shifts in the greater society.
This seems confused, in two respects.
First, no one is telling you how to run your game. No one in this thread. Nor, presumably, WotC - just because
they envisage a gameworld that includes non-heterosexual people, or people of no or indeterminate sex and/or gender, doesn't mean that you have to. (Just as, as you have posted upthread, the fact that the 1st ed AD&D PHB didn't identify any such people in the gameworld didn't stop anyone inventing gameworlds with such people.)
Second, WotC expressly identifying such people as being among the people of the gameworld that
they envision, as the publisher of D&D, is exactly an example of a "previous group slowly chang[ing] its behaviour as a reaction to shifts in the greater society." In other words, the process you said you hope is taking place,
is taking place.
(A possible third confusion, mentioned by others, is that your post seems to imply that the change in question happens without anyone who wants the change actually expressing that desire. I think the history of modern social movements -
especially around sex, sexuality and gender - shows that that is not the case.)