Oy Did That Piss Me Off!!!!

Without making too long a story of it, a few years ago I left the religion in which I spent 30 years. It took a while to get up the nerve to tell my mother, and she reacted as one might expect.

She's written emails to the family that make it pretty clear that she's convinced I'm going to hell when I die, and that makes her sad, but she knows where she's going (cue harps).  Those emails sting, but I try to laugh it off.

I haven't talked to her  a lot lately due to my insane work schedule, so I gave her a call yesterday while I was stuck in traffic on the way home from work. No worries--the phone goes through my car speakers, so I wasn't trying to juggle a telephone. Anyway, we were having a reasonably decent conversation, and I'm not sure how, but we ended up on the topic of Dorothy L. Sayers.

Dorothy L. Sayers was the author of the excellent Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels. She did a superb translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.  Just a brilliant woman.  Anyway, I told my mother that every once in a while, Amazon will drop the price on a Sayers novel and I'll snap it up for my iPad. Recently they did that with Strong Poison. I then asked my mother if she'd read any of Jill Patton Walsh's continuation of the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane novels, and she said she'd read two of them, and we talked about them for a few moments. The dialog is wrong, and they lack the sparkle that Sayers prose carried, but they're not bad.  My mother then interjected that she was glad Bunter (Lord Peter's manservant) got married in one of the books. I was glad, too, but as it turned out, for a different reason than my mother.

"There were some indications that Bunter might be homosexual," she said.

I was speechless, then made a hasty excuse to end the conversation.

My mother was glad that Lord Peter's manservant got married, not because she wanted this fictional character to have a happy and fulfilling home life, but because she was worried that he was gay.

Did she think that he was having fantasies about romantic liaisons with Lord Peter?

Does it even fucking matter?

People kill each other. People mutilate each other. There is famine. Disease. People stealing other people's livelihoods and retirement accounts. Parents abusing their children.

And my mother was worried because a fictional character might be homosexual.

You know what, Mom? I'll stick with people who are funny, smart, kind, loving, decent, honourable people. And I don't give a damn who they sleep with.