Hi there! Thank you for your lovely words about the books: cheered me right up while I'm down with flu! My views about queerness on Cardassia evolved vastly over the years I was writing first my DS9 fanfiction and then the books, as I left a narrow Catholic upbringing, found the internet, did a PhD, and also got what I think of my real postgraduate education, learning from the people I met in online communities.
A long time ago I wrote a fanfiction called "Scorched Earth", a DS9 AU where Tain's attack on the Founders is successful, and Garak returns in triumph to Cardassia. I wrote that more or less after the show ended. Garak's return is very bitter, rather than sweet (what a surprise), chiefly because he finds himself (a queer man) trapped serving a repressively patriarchal society (headed by his own actual father). In retrospect I wrote myself (and Garak) into a corner in that story, and didn't find a path to real liberation there. Hey, I was still in my 20s. I'll cut myself some slack. But a failure of imagination.
Some of those ideas came over into the books. We hear the Cardassians, again and again, talk in terms of family, in terms of sons and daughters, and - given how Dukat is sidelined and Ziyal ostracised, and how vehemently Tain denies having a bastard son - it seemed reasonable to think that Cardassia legislates in favour of heteronormative families, and that other forms of being and loving in the world would be illegal. My feeling was that some of this might be driven by a permanent sense of the precariousness of their society: that it's always close to famine, so you have lots of kids to make sure at least one of them gets through, so the family takes on this talismanic status. We know canonically that people are starving on Prime before the Dominion arrives. (As an aside, a lot of DS9's storytelling revolves around the tension between blood ties and what we might call "found" ties. Kira and Ghemor are a prime example of this. I think that's one reason why it's so disappointing when Sisko sends Rugal back to Cardassia.)
I kind of think that Dukat, once the Dominion put him in power, would push through "pro-family" legislation, because - well, isn't he that kind of absolute fascist? (As an aside, I imagine Dukat hating Garak partly for being queer, but also because Garak always makes it perfectly clear that he finds Dukat repulsive - which Dukat can't bear. Garak would sleep with anyone - but he'd never, ever sleep with Dukat. Dukat must hate that.)
So where does this leave the characters in my books? Yes, the lesbian anarchists are radicals, and not really in alignment with the majority (I think one of them talks about being kicked out by her family?). In general, my sense is that your average Cardassian (before the Fire) didn't mind so long as (to use some of those old cliches), people didn't flaunt it, but once Dukat got into power, they turned the other way when arrests or violence were happening.
As for after the Fire: I have a feeling that there are so few Cardassians left that nobody gives a flying fuck who's sleeping with who. It's just good enough that people have survived. Parmak I saw as the product of a time when you would keep your private life private. While Garak wouldn't be caught telling anyone anything about himself and, once he became castellan, might fear for Parmak's safety (or use it as an excuse to keep his secrets). Akret knows absolutely everything. Mhevet knows too, but she and Garak don't talk about it. They don't talk about her girlfriends either. Maybe they would have, in the unwritten final book.
