Do BioWare game romances mean sex scenes?

I agree that the two aren't the same, I'm merely questioning why one is okay and one isn't.
If this is purely a discussion about taste and personal preference, then there's very little to discuss.

Or at the very least, let the sex scenes be optional/skippable.  Which Bioware seems rather reluctant to do anymore.

Culen, Cassandra, Iron Bull, and Sera (I don't think her scenes are skippable)

In addition, in MEA we have Peebee and Jaal.  

Culen, Cassandra, Iron Bull, and Sera (I don't think her scenes are skippable)

In addition, in MEA we have Peebee and Jaal.  

Yeah, overall they've definitely gone into more options and that seems to be a trend they will continue.
The Shepard Trilogy like you said had all the romances(except Kelly) require sex in the romances. Even the ME1 romances if optional in there became mandatory in ME3. MEA had it I believe as 4 mandatory(Gil, Jaal, PeeBee, Vetra), 3 implied(Keri, Liam, Reyes), 1 optional(Cora), 1 ambiguous(Suvi), and 1 nonsexual(Avela).

Dragon Age actually is interesting since the first game had more options than the second. In DAO I believe Morrigan and Zevran are mandatory, can't remember about Alistair, but I know Leliana has a non-sexual route. Meanwhile DA2 had them all be mandatory in the vanilla game with the only exception being Sebastian who was DLC. Then in Inquisition there were four mandatory(Cassandra, Cullen, Sera, The Iron Bull), 2 optional(Blackwall, Dorian), and two ambiguous(Josephine, Solas). 

Alistair's romance did not require sex.

But ME1 was the best of all possible worlds.  You could choose whether to sleep with the LI or not, and even if you did have Shepard sleep with them, you could skip past the sex scene.

DAO also lets you slip past the underwear sex, though Morrigan and Zevran do require sleeping with them to complete the romance.

No, Shepard politely turns them down.  It does not break the romance.  Th picture appears in ME2.

See, I have a problem with "should" here. I don't see why or according to what rules.

As for the rest, personally I don't think it's very interesting honestly.
Correction, I'm sure those narrative points above might be interesting to you personally, but I doubt this has any broad appeal.

Romance doesn't work for most people without sex, it's like an exercise in frustration.
Sex as part of romance is merely the natural progression, it doesn't cheapen the romance, it merely takes it to another dimension.

I can see the argument for why in specific circumstances sex simply doesn't make sense - like say with Tali, but I think that at the end of the day this angle won't be particularly interesting for most people. Especially if this is dropped at a later stage in the romance I'd imagine that this would be rather annoying, like dating someone as a transsexual and not telling them. (in case it isn't obvious)

It may provide you with validation or whatever it is you are looking for, but that's about it.

So it seems to me that even this comes full circle into matters of taste. Because providing such characters with every game that offers romance, which I'd imagine is the ideal situation for you, seems to me more a matter of "representation" and catering to the taste of a handful of individuals (a minority even among minorities), than any honest attempt to explore a different story.

And by the way, this is why I don't like the "representation" argument: Because there's always a smaller minority that needs "representation".
It's a figurative black hole.

I'm sure everyone here has their own vision of how the perfect game should allocate resources.

I don't disagree necessarily, I think that Bioware games in some ways started going the route of "broad as an ocean, deep as a puddle".

After all, you "need" to "represent" everyone, and you can't even make characters "playersexual" because that "cheapens" the "representation" of "Who They Are". So yeah, everything considered, I wouldn't mind seeing a bigger focus on things that are interesting to everyone (as opposed to things that are only interesting to the few) and don't have to do with modern obsessions with sex and gender.

In theory, if you had two romance arcs for the protagonist (perhaps four but that's stretching it) and made those options "playersexual", you could go much deeper into the (no, this wasn't innuendo...) story with them, connect them to the overall narrative, etc.

It will also get rid of the "choose correct dialogue option, have sex, done" aspect of this since you could make it into something much more interesting and realistic.

Why not?

If all you want is simply a sex scene to make romance satisfying for you, then frankly you have bigger problems