Natalia has always been a stealth homophobe. As someone said, there's still plenty of 'liberal' people like her out there.
Like many, I think they brought her on as obvious conflict for the boring couple. But I also think Frank saw hiring Eva LaRue as another big soap get he could fanboy out over, and keep her around for months or years doing nothing but being a superficial feather in his show's cap like so many other actors. I think that's why the show has attempted to test her with Maurice. If past creative choices show out under FV we could be stuck with Eva for another couple years. I'm hoping the reaction is so negative it won't take that long, but we all saw the reign of Peter August.
I'm still slowly catching up on the show after being busy with personal stuff - I'm about two weeks back. The scenes surrounding Gregory's death and the fallout, Finn, etc. were very well-done and carefully paced, with real time taken. I'll probably stay another week or two to see how much more of PM's vision we can get, but if it degrades more as others have said I won't be staying until Mulcahey's name is off.