A gay kid looking...

Short version: Gay kid looking for a church that's supportive.

My first response is "Don't do that to yourself." But that wasn't what they wanted. They wanted a church where they could build a relationship with a loving God that accepted that they were gay. So, what do I do? I call around and try to find one for them by contacting people I know at various churches in town that I suspected would be good fits.

And that should've been the end of it, but it got me thinking. That's always dangerous. 

What is a good person? Make a list of the qualities that you believe make a good person. What values? What attitudes? What actions would you say are in the "good person" column? 

The problem with asking that is that so many people give really good answers. That shouldn't be a problem.

The problem comes in when they talk about their politics. 

If a person's politics don't align with their values, the values that they think constitute a good and moral person... what does that say about them? The politics a person espouses is an extension of their actual values. It's the way an individual attempts to expand their influence in the world and when the political candidate doesn't display any of the values that a person says, themselves, are attributes of a good person... I can't think they're actually good people themselves.

If you recognize a set of values as desirable, as noteworthy, as goals to be aspired to, but then ignore those when it comes to political decisions... that's not good. That's hypocrisy.

There's someone at work who claims to be a Randian level conservative but who has their hand out for free drinks when it's hot at work, and bitches when they're not there. They want the handouts for themselves, but they vote against any social program that they can. They want the handouts for themselves... they don't want YOU to have any, but they will take them, happily. Hypocrisy.

Super annoying.

What's this got to do with churches? Well, the values they teach... are they the ones they practice? They talk about loving god. They say we're all sinners. They say we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But as a gay... it's hard to get past the part where I've been the gay told I was good enough to attend the church but not good enough to be a member OF the church so long as I was gay. Because some sins are more sins than others and to a lot of churches being gay is a special kind of sin that God needs help judging because He can't do it on his own so they do it for Him. 

So, would I recommend a church on purpose, to anyone? Nah. In my experience, it's just a place where people are nicer about their bigotry... usually. 

But that wasn't the assignment. The assignment was to help a gay kid find a church because that's what they wanted. I hope it works out for them.

Upped the dose

Nobody follows this which is cool. Means I can talk about stuff without anybody reading it. I process things by writing them out. Like there's a boil in my brain that needs lancing and writing is how I do that.

Roe V Wade happened and that's not great but I'm a self absorbed douche and fixated on Thomas's opinion that gay rights should be tossed out. Not just marriage but also making gay sex a criminal offense.

I have been sort of numb since then. I know how I am. I've intentionally avoided deleting everything and going full hermit but one thing I absolutely don't need or want is well meaning straight people saying to not worry.  They're not the ones being told they deserve to be locked away from normal people because their existence is an offense against society. Frankly I don't want to hear it right now. I want to look at the horizon and see plumes of smoke as it all burns to the fucking ground.

I've upped the dose on the antidepressants. Be better to be numb I think... I know. At least for a while. It's not numb as much as so jittery I can't focus on anything long enough to spiral. The hard part is knowing when to go off or drop the dose back down to a maintenance level. I normally only go up for fall, seasonal affected depression they call it, SAD. An unfortunate acronym actually. 

How long is this season going to last? Is this the season for now tho? They're lifetime appointments. How much worse is it going to get? How much is my innate cynicism and how much is reality?

But, work's a thing. It doesn't care... It just keeps happening and I gotta keep going. One of my things is I make myself go, make myself have at least one stable thing that's not fucked up. So, here I am in the parking lot early rather than sitting at home, spiraling. Five more twelve hour shifts and not enough sleep before I am off so I won't have to deal with thinking for a while. That's nice. Easy enough to coast through the rut of work and not think... The edge will be off by then probably.

I have to pee. Not because I've over hydrated in anticipation of it being hot as balls at work but because I've drank probably a pot of coffee this morning. Not a great idea. I'll have worse ones I'm sure. If that's my worst I'm doing okay, honestly.

Take care of yourself. 

Race in 2020 - RIP George Floyd

The country is on fire right now and...

We need to be part of something that happens, something that changes... there's something sick out there. There's something broken. There's something WRONG.

It's... I'm trying to figure out how to say it while I'm writing it instead of planning this out like I usually do. I'm sorry. (Also: Warning... will contain adult language and a link to a video that is definitely difficult to watch)

I grew up in the South. For my first few years of school, I was a minority, little toe-headed white boy. My best friend was Irna. She was black (I imagine she still is actually... it's not something that goes away). We moved to Germany and I went to High School on an army base there. The army is more racially diverse than a lot of America is, and less important than your color is your rank. Yeah, I know, it's elitist. But, hey, the Officer's Club had better video games. My best friend through high school was biracial, in Germany that definitely counted as black. It was pretty white over there then. I haven't been back for a while so I don't know what it's like now. Back in the thirties and forties they sort of got rid of the ones who didn't fit their interior decorating palette...

I went back to Alabama to go to college and Mom remembers me saying early in going back an observation about the cafeteria at the university. I was disappointed to note that there were clusters of colors. There wasn't a lot of mixing going on. That was in 1986. Everybody was self-segregating into black and white tables.

I got to be Supervisor down in Memphis years later, and I had no white employees for years. None, every employee I had was black. For about four hours I had a white lady working for me, but she went to lunch and never came back.

Something I've learned in all that time is that there are two worlds out there. There are two Americas. There's the one I live in where I and another white male middle-aged friend of mine can trespass, park a truck on someone's business property at night and watch fireworks and not get the cops called on us... and then there's the one where I could be on the news being killed because of what I look like.

That's not political. It's not hippie leftist thinking. It's a fact. And it's hard to watch. It's hard to see over and over again. And it doesn't have to be that way. It's a choice. It's a choice for those people who are doing the killing.

I see people saying, "BLUE LIVES MATTER!" during the conversation and I close my eyes and I close my mouth because there are no blue lives. Blue is a job. If you take off your blue shirt and go to the mall you're not blue anymore. You can live your life without being blue if you want to. You can't take off black. It's there. And it is such a different experience from being white.

Yes. It's better than it was. But that doesn't mean it's good. Better doesn't mean right. If you haven't eaten in 20 days and someone gives you a teaspoon of oatmeal a day, that's better... but it's not good. It's not enough.

Just because things are better doesn't mean it's good enough.

I KNOW you would never do something like this. If you would, you wouldn't be reading my blog. But there's more to it than that. I'm not telling myself "Well, I'd never do that so let's talk about the riots."

Fuck the riots. I could give two shits about the riots in this conversation. That's exactly what keeps happening. The trigger gets drowned out by the noise of what follows and we don't address the trigger. We address the noise.

What else can I do? What else can WE do, to help things continue to get better? Just waiting for the old racists who were raised to think "negro" was the good word so let's all just use that one and they can't complain to die isn't working. Our health care is getting too good. They're living too long. We can't wait for all the racists to die for things to get better. Because they're like gay people. Nobody knows why they keep happening but dammit! Every time I turn around there's another homo or racist sitting on the corner with some cause or another. What the hell man? Gimme a break. I just want to go to work, go to a restaurant once in a while, and go home and watch Survivor with my gay husband. Is that too much to ask? (He's the gay one, not me! Straight as hell! LoL)

The thing is, that's all the people who keep getting killed want. Maybe they want Skittles. Maybe they want help when their car breaks down. Maybe they want to go for a walk. Maybe they want to go for a jog. What they don't want is to live in fear of the police. They don't want to teach their kids to be afraid of the police. They don't want to be afraid they're going to be shot if they have a tail light out that they haven't fixed yet.

They don't want to lay on the ground while a police dog chews on them, LITERALLY CHEWS on them so afraid if they move at all WHILE THE DOG CHEWS THEM that they'll be shot. What world is it that we, you and I, have allowed to exist that they overcome literally every instinct to NOT BE EATEN because their fear of the police is worse than their fear of the dog that is literally chewing on them right then? How have you allowed that to happen? How have I? How have we? Because that's the reality for a black person in today's America.

So, what can we do to fix it? Literally, anybody who isn't trying to help in this situation, anybody who says, "Well, they just need to learn patience. Change takes time..." they're part of the problem.

If two poufs can get married when that was UNIMAGINABLE 30 years ago, then a black man should be able to interact with a law enforcement officer without being afraid he's going to die.

That's all I want. I want our police officers to be the good guys for ALL of us. Not just for my Aryan ass. ALL of us. Including my friends who have more melanin and less skin cancer than me and my family.

If you disagree with anything I've said, please unfollow me. I'm really distressed by all of this, more than I should be for as often as it happens. I should be numb to it by now but I'm not getting desensitized to it for some reason. I guess it's because I think it's important. I think it matters and I can't stop thinking about it.

I said yes

I've been roommates, best friends, Navy buddies, and long-distance besties with someone for almost thirty years now. On April 2, 1988 I knew it was a thing when he agreed to go see Beetlejuice with me a second time even though my loud laugh embarrassed him.

We talked about it, I nagged him into talking about it about ten years ago and he wasn't up for it then. There were familial concerns on both our parts. His family is important to me and I wouldn't want to alienate them and the whole idea was still sort of new at the time so we waited.

I'd left it at that. Unbeknownst to me, he hadn't. He'd talked to several of them without me knowing about it both then, in the intervening years, and again recently.

I was completely surprised when he asked me if I still wanted to marry him and I found myself holding an already mostly filled out marriage application. I grinned like an idiot and said "yes." It turns out there's a three-day wait between getting the license and being able to get married in Iowa. I wasn't willing to risk him changing his mind so I found a district judge willing to waive the waiting period and thirty hours after he asked me if I still wanted to we were standing in front of the magistrate. His Mom who wasn't a fan of it for religious reasons and who I did NOT think would show up, did. I was glad she did. Otherwise, it was just two friends of ours to serve as witnesses.

Through the legal hoops and getting signatures, I was constantly surprised at how happy for us the people seemed. There wasn't any shocked recoiling or clutching at pearls and swooning at the idea of two guys getting married. Nobody was anything but excited in any of the various offices I visited. Even the judge who had hurt his hand when the guard fell off a leaf blower he was using was in the spirit of it all.

What I found most surprising though was how, in spite of us being so close for so long, and not believing this would change much, we both got nervous trembling excited voice and big stupid grins when saying the vows to each other. I hadn't expected that from me, and certainly not from super-stoic him. It made me smile.

Shortly after the ceremony in front of the judge I ran to the coffee shop, because I do that whenever there is any sort of opening in my schedule and I said to the barista, a long time friend, that since I was hitched now I could finally let myself go. He laughed. Half an hour later my phone rang, "You know what I just realized? I can let myself go now!" I laughed and told him what I'd said to Kaleb and he laughed too. "I guess we do think alike."

So, yeah. We're married now, and I'm pretty happy about it.

Ducky Dynasty. Gays. Opinions. A&E. I'm all over the place with this one.

The Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson said things that has the LGBT community all up in arms.
A&E in response chucked him off the show for a while.
Everybody's outraged about something.

1) I'm ticked at A&E for making a ton of money off DD and acting all surprised when they found out this guy whose schtick is to be a conservative redneck espouses and verbalizes an opinion that is conservative and bible based (to his way of thinking.)
2) I'm ticked at the professional-offendees who I swear to God have NEVER watched the show or they'd KNOW he believed something like that from the first minute he opened his damned mouth. C'mon people. Why are you acting surprised? Don't be. You're not that stupid.
3) I'm ticked at all this social media rending of the clothes and putting ashes in the hair wailing about how they'll NEVER watch the show again... oh, bullshit. You never watched it in the first place. Shut up and sit down. You're annoying.

Me? I never watched the show. It looked like a show about rich rednecks pretending not to be rich rednecks so poor rednecks would buy their crap and make them richer rednecks. Not my thing. For what it's worth, it works. I see poor lazy rednecks these hard working conservative sons of bitches wouldn't give the time of day to buying their crap all day long at work.

But I think the guy should be allowed to speak his mind whenever he wants. How are we going to know who the assholes are if we don't let them show their ass-holery by talking? How would we know who to avoid? Vote with your dollars but don't act like his words hurt you. So, he thinks us gays are the same as terrorists and he can't figure out how dudes get it on because a vagina's more interesting? *shrug* Won't keep me up nights. I wonder if he likes lesbians. That's TWO vaginas slapping together in some sort of scissorfest of God knows how THAT works... no clue. Something tells me there's attachments involved or yoga, or hell, I don't know.

I'm a gay and seriously. I don't need the media, the LGBT community, liberal watch-dog groups, or any other professional-offendee running around talking about how hurt I am by this guy's opinion. Hell. I've got opinions that would offend if people got to know me well enough to find out what they are. *shrug* I don't particularly CARE if you're offended. You'll get over it. If you don't well... you probably won't die from me having a different opinion from you. If you do. Wow. Sucks to be you.

We're reaching a point I hate. Can't pick on the precious little super-sensitive gays or you're a gay hater. Can't talk about anybody any more without being some kind of -ist. That's bullshit. I talk about people all the time. Sometimes I even mention someone is black. Not kidding. I've said it. Sometimes it's pertinent. If it's not I leave it out. It doesn't make me a racist. It means I'm not blind. I'm pretty sure I'm described as white when the need arises to distinguish me from other people.

It doesn't make me a racist to recognize a person's color. It would make me a racist if I treated them differently because of their color. It would make me racist if I expected less out of a person because of their race. If I make a joke about a person and that joke is ONLY about their race... that's pretty racist. If I keep doing it, yeah. That's racist. If it happens once it's in bad taste but I don't think it's enough to add that ever important -ist on there.

So, when the DD guy says he saw black people being happy, that was his world view. You can't fault a guy for what he remembers. I grew up in the 70s in Alabama. I don't remember ANY racial tension. My memories of the time would be that there was no racial tension in the 70s in Southern Alabama. I suspect if I were famous and on a TV interview and said we all got along great and everybody was happy I'd be named a racist. I'm not. I just didn't see anything else at the time. Not really.

So, dear LGBT professional-offendees who seriously, are we to believe you've watched the show and your boycott means anything? Get over yourselves. You're annoying. You don't speak for me. You don't even KIND of speak for me. If I get offended I'll say so. Right now I'm offended you think I'm a delicate little flower that can't handle some bearded redneck asshole saying he thinks gay sex is a sin and that it's gross and a vagina is better. That's not offensive. What's offensive is acting like I need your protection. I don't. When I get offended I'll tell you, like I am now, that you're acting like jerks and you should shut the eff up and stop speaking for me. You don't. You never have and if you keep this crap up you never will.

We're called gay. That means happy. Start laughing at people who say things annoying instead of running crying to the boycott drama because seriously. Who cares if you boycott. I could do with a lot less of your whining cry-baby assed opinions anyway. Oh boo-hoo... he said gay sex was a sin! No shit. You've never heard that before? STFU. You have to. Get over yourselves. Lighten up. Laugh a little. BE Gay for crying out loud. You're the least gay gays I've ever had the miserable experience of listening to.

Can't you pretend to be normal? (Me & Writing 3 of 3)

Rich sat on the front steps of the white ranch style house and stared out into the pecan orchard. Tables were set up in front of him as almost a dozen of his extended family milled around making sure all the food was put out right and there were serving utensils. He looked right, towards the blacktop and saw, in the stretch of grass between the house and the road that a football game had started. He couldn't see his cousin Dean anywhere. As Granny walked towards the steps holding a pitcher that once held iced tea he stood and opened the door for her, ten-year olds knew to open doors for ladies in the South in the seventies. He would be ten in a few months. "Do you know where Dean went?"

"I think he went inside," she said as she climbed the three concrete steps slowly and held the door as she entered the house with Rich right behind her. He stopped at the cookie jar in the kitchen and pulled a peppermint out before walking down the hall that went the length of the house towards the guest room he slept in when he stayed here a week or two each summer. The door to his room was shut and he pushed it open after popping the starlight peppermint into his mouth and using his tongue to flip it into his cheek.

"There you are." Dean sat on the bed holding a purse and his eyes were red. He'd been crying... again. "Why don't  you come out and play with us? We're going to play tag until it gets dark and then hide and seek."

Dean wiped his nose with the back of his pale thin arm and looked up at Rich out from under impossibly curly hair that was almost an afro it was so long and the curls so tight. "They were making fun of me again."

"Who was?" Rich asked sitting on the bed next to Dean and dangling his dirty feet over the edge.

"Steve and them."

"Because of the purse?"

"Yes."

"So leave it inside."

"But I like it. I want to play with it. I can still run and play tag. How's a purse stop me from running?"

"I mean when there's all these people here. They..." Rich was thinking they didn't know Dean played with a purse, but everybody knew he did. Everybody knew he acted like a girl all the time and everybody talked about it. But he'd always done that. He was eight and as long as Rich could remember Dean had acted like a girl. Not a tom-boy girl either, a girly girl, girlier than any girl Rich knew. "They just... Can't you just leave it alone? One family reunion a year is all we have. Can't you pretend to be a boy for one day? Pretend to be normal? People wouldn't be so mean then."

"But I'm not. Nobody else has to pretend to be somebody. Just me. I don't want to." Dean was crying again. If Rich had been older he'd have recognized them as mad tears. But at nine and a half tears were tears.

"But I want you to come play with us and it'll be more fun if you do. Most of the other kids here don't know all the good hiding places you do. You live here. You'll be better at it than them. They can't make fun of you then, not if you win." Rich knew Dean wouldn't win. He never won. He screamed, no, squealed as he ran and ran like a girl. Anybody could catch him. But he did want him to come play. His older cousin was playing football. The one he usually played with and Rich didn't know most of his other cousins out there. Some company, even Dean, would be better than none. "Please."

"But they don't like me. None of them do." Dean said softly.

"They barely know you. They're just mean." Rich said.

"Why are they always mean to me though?" Dean asked.

"Because you're different. Just don't be different and they won't be mean." As Rich said it he felt like he was onto something big that he was just starting to figure out for himself. "Just pretend to be like everybody else. Just act like everybody else. Act like a boy."

"I hate being a boy." Dean hissed. "I'm just a boy here." He grabbed at his crotch.

"Well that's how you tell who's a boy and who's a girl. It's the difference."

"Not for me." Dean said.

"For everybody. You don't have to mean it. You can just fake it. Like acting. Like when we play scenes from the Carol Burnett Show." Probably not the best thing to mention since Rich played Tim Conway and Dean always played Mrs. ah-Whiggens or Charo.

Dean fiddled with the purse some more, snapping it open and shut. Open and shut. Open and shut. It was wicker and the handles dark brown leather. The brass catch on it was clicking loudly every time Dean slid it shut. He put the purse on the bed beside him and stood up. "Only one time, and you have to play with me tomorrow instead of Harvey." Harvey was his older brother, the cousin Rich most liked playing with, the one he looked up to and admired.

"OK. I promise." Rich picked the purse up off the bed and tossed it towards a chair that had clothes on it. He didn't want anybody to come in and see it on his bed and think it was his. Dean's eyes tracked it across the room as it flew.

He hugged Rich quickly and Rich hugged him back, uncomfortably, unsure if what he'd just done was a good thing or not. He knew for himself getting along by acting like everybody else was looking like a good idea but it didn't seem like Dean was going to be able to. He didn't know if he should have told him to. Even now, thirty years later he still wasn't sure if what he'd done was good or not. Dean wasn't Dean any more. He went, she went, by Melissa now, whereas Rich was still Rich and most people he met couldn't tell he was gay until someone told them... and someone always told.

Uncomfortable Ramblings...

So, I am in bed. I should be going to sleep (Yeah, it's early but I got up early today and I have to again tomorrow and it was a long day today) but I'm bugged.

See, there was this thread on Facebook that got this really really long conversation going that was about the sin of gaiety. Now, obviously the people IN the thread didn't talk about it like that. It'd appear to be making light of what is obviously a life or after-life discussion. (See what I did there? Yeah, I'm freaking hysterical aren't I?)

There seemed to be two, maybe three points in the argument. I should start with the given's like in Geometry when you start with a given you them move through your proof to your conclusion. The given accepted by all was that being a big ole homo is a sin. No questions asked. The points of debate were how much of a sin was it I think.

Some seemed to think it was unforgivable since the sinners (that'd be the queers, can we call us queers if we're mocking an argument?) were embracing their lifestyle. Unlike those who lie, cheat on their spouses, neglect their kids, covet their neighbor's minivan & buy new cars instead of driving a functional beater and giving their excess wealth to feed the hungry and clothe the poor straights out there. All those people, those sins are forgivable. But those pesky gays... they gotta just burn.

Another argument was, "Hey. Yeah, it's a sin. I get that... but so is lying, gossiping, back-stabbing, being unfaithful... why you picking on the gay sinners? Why not point out everybody's flaws while you're at it?" I kind of liked that one the most honestly since it feels the most honest... and seemed most in line with what Jesus had to say on the topic of us talking about other people's sins. Not Moses or Paul, but Jesus Himself.
Matthew 7: 1-5
1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam [is] in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

The last argument seemed along the lines of "Yes. It's sin and I don't want to look at it so don't make me. I'm not saying I'm any better than them. I'm saying I don't want to have to look at it." Which is... here's the thing. Assuming they think it's a sin, and they obviously do, Of COURSE they don't want to look at it. They probably also don't rent Nightmare on Elm Street 1-21 or Saw or Debbie Does Dallas either. My guess is they're trying to surround themselves with things that support and encourage the things they believe in. I can't fault them for that honestly. I am gay and I try and surround myself with things that support and encourage the things I believe in.

What do I believe in as a big ole nasty evil gay? I believe I should help those less fortunate than myself. I believe if I spend more time helping other people than I do looking down on them for their faults that I'm getting closer to right. I believe that people want to be good. I believe it's easier to sin than to not sin. I believe in supporting people's good decisions and letting them know when they make a bad decision that you disagree with their decision but you still love them. I believe I live my life in a way that if Jesus himself were standing over my shoulder he'd mostly be OK with it. OK. He'd probably pretty much hate my job but I'm talking about my outside of work life. I'm talking about how I treat my friends, the people I love, my family, the man I love.

Here's the thing. I probably had some people nodding right up until those last 4 words... but I bet I can get 'em back. I've loved the same man since erm... April 1988 and we had a pretty good life together for a long time. (He moved, he's not dead.) In all that time the part of the ghey that sets people to frothing and quivering with barely constrained outrage... the sex... we didn't do that bit. So, my sin is, in loving another man, not in laying with him like a woman because honestly, that NEVER happened. (We slept in the same bed in January of 89 after the Superbowl but it was perfectly innocent. There wasn't another bed and we kept our clothes on. It was very 1960s of us.)

Here's the part that has me bugged. Some of those people in the thread... would they want me at their house? Would they want me at a family gathering/event or would they be upset that I was there? I don't know and I like them. I really think they're good people. But now I'm wondering do they think I'm NOT good people and they're too polite to say?

(I've turned off comments on this one because God knows what google search results will drag into THIS particular post lol) If you want to comment I'm cross posting this to google + and I wish you'd comment there. Here's a link to there.)

C'mon - I'm not THAT gay.

“Look,” I told Ruthie now, “I don’t want to be that guy, okay? The gay guy. The token homosexual..."

Sprout by David Peck

So, I'm gay. I don't know if I've said that on the blog before or not but it's out there on the Internets somewhere. People in real life know too and oddly enough THEY'RE the ones that are bugging me. It's not that I'm being discriminated against or hassled or bullied. That doesn't happen. It certainly doesn't happen twice. *grin*
So, I meet someone for the first time and we know each other for a while and that's fine. Then a friend of mine comes up and says, within an hour, something about my being gay. It doesn't even really fit into the conversation so much as it's a comment. Maybe to show how hip they are that they know "a gay" or how OK with it they are or what. I've got no idea. But I know in at least two cases I've had the new person I met say to me later, "I didn't know you were gay, hadn't thought you were gay, and while it's OK(1) and all... it was just a little awkward to have that thrown out there like that so soon on meeting you." OK. That's not verbatim but it's the gist of what was said twice.
I'm not ashamed of who I am at all. It's not that I'm necessarily closeted, I'm not. But I don't think my sexuality is appropriate conversation when I'm just meeting someone, unless I'm trying to hook up with them (and I'm off the market so that's not really an issue either.) I think it's just rude. I'm not offended by it so much as I would rather that the new people I meet form an opinion of me that isn't based on who I love. I'm a little over being the token gay.
Among friends I'll make comments or jokes or observations that I wouldn't make among new people. But it's like that with a lot of things, not just my sexuality. I wouldn't talk about other people's private lives in the first hour I meet someone they've only just met. Private issues, like sexuality, politics, religion, prior criminal background, stance on drugs, etc... Those aren't really great topics for conversation when first meeting someone in my opinion.
So, if you know a gay, let them decide who and when to talk about it. It's their decision. Or rather, it's OUR decision.

"When I started writing about myself, I waited as long as I could before I told you I was gay, because once you reveal that, it seems like it’s all anyone can think about."

Sprout by David Peck

(1) I love how often ppl say "It's OK" or "It's your choice and that's OK" and they're really not meaning it in a bad way at all but it sounds hinky to my ears. a) I know it's OK and b) I'm pretty sure I didn't choose it.