It was the oddest thing. He got really angry with me, but in hindsight I think he felt a little silly having said, "I have this gay friend." So I told him that it just seemed odd. It would be like me saying, "I have this black friend and he loves to read." Because his love of reading has nothing to do with his being black anymore than his friend's weird word pronunciation has to do with him being gay. So for the next of the night, whenever I spoke to the guy I work with, I prefaced who I was talking about with some description.

"My half Puerto Rican co-worker Daniel needs you to take some iced tea to his table."

"Left-handed Joe just told me the funniest joke!"

Finally my co-worker was like "Ok! I get it! Stop talking about people like that!"

I did turn it into a big joke, but it really did kind of bother me. Everyone is always so concerned with labeling other people. It drives me crazy! But maybe now my co-worker will think twice when talking about someone different from himself.