A follow up from my last thread. I started a poll to see what people thought.
While Mark and Gary may be able to confirm, when the site was created it had a more generic layout which included requesting the basic information and having defaults of what all would be mandatory. Some of that has been changed, updated or removed while some has not. The biggest reason I can see and have had reports for is homophobia. Some people on the site do not want to meet or cuddle with someone who is bi, gay, trans, etc. Some have had dangerous situations come up because they tried to hide this fact about themselves or were just clicking through too quickly when creating their profile not noticing what they'd set it to.
So while the section may have started as a site default, it's now a safety feature to help prevent putting people in possibly hostile situations.