Well, I for one am a little disappointed in the quick dismissal of this subject. Yes, it's a very tough issue to tolerate and handle with care in forums like this, but this is Star Trek. Difference should be welcomed, not "I'm tempted to close this damn thing."
I'm not trying to rock the boat, and I'm not gay, but I agree with the disappointment, and frankly found the response by a moderator up-page a bit disgusting. The OP didn't try to troll for gay sex or anything, they simply asked a pretty straight-forward question about an aspect - as valid as any other - of the upcoming movie and future handling of Trek. I'm not sure what the drama is.
Back
on topic, I prefer to think that there have already been "gay" characters in Trek - but by the time of the future shown, sexual labels like that are no longer used. Essentially,
everyone is potentially bi, and just has preferences that, naturally, probably still generally tend to follow reproductive, biologically driven perogatives - but no one is hung up about it if they don't.
Or, put another way, If Scotty (for example) never had sex with another male, it would be because he never met a male he felt attracted to or thought he was in love with, not because he's "straight" or "gay".
It would be nice to see some confirmation of this somewhere, though. I'd less like to see a gay
character, per se, and more like to hear Kirk explain to McCoy that he knows the (male) captain of another ship pretty well because they used to date - without any strange looks from McCoy about "teh gay". Or something similar.