Getting Better

A long cherished and not at all guilty pleasure of mine is to read the Styles section of the Sunday New York Times before the rest of the newspaper. Yes, I am one of those luddites who insists on feeling the paper and seeing the print come off on his fingers. With reason. One of my first paying jobs in the small town where I grew up was delivering newspapers to people’s homes. That was in the 1960s. I still love the feel of newsprint in the 2020s. I love the way it reads. Unquestionably superior to online media.

I throw aside the other sections of the paper for one simple reason. I love reading the weddings stories in what used to be called the women’s pages.

I am a fashion ignoramus — by design — where the couples’ suits and dresses came from mean nothing to me. Where the people came from, how they came together, that is everything. Their joy, their happiness, their love is proof of the goodness in humans’ hearts writ large.

They live their love in their audacity.

So, sue me.

I’m a sucker for a happily ever after story. Give me Carol Burnett singing “Happily Ever After” any day of the week.

There are a couple of columns I typically enjoy reading on my way to wedding central. One of them is the Times version of Ann Landers or Dear Abby. Remember them? The sob story sisters who had the bang on advice?

This week the lead letter hit me personally. The mother of a fourteen-year-old boy wrote how she had been with her son at a sporting event where he was bullied and called gay.

The anti-Ann column author, also a gay man, gave a weak-kneed response about possible things to do in the future. Have milque toast conversations. Sit in the background and do absolutely nothing of any good to anyone, least of all her own child.

Nothing with guts.

I was dreadfully let down with his answer. Ann and Abby would have been terribly disappointed with him. He would have gotten twenty lashes with a wet noodle.

It is rare for me to write to the author of a column. I write to a couple of friends who are bloggers. I know them. I feel comfortable asking questions and passing along my experiences.

In the case of the anti-Ann Landers with the unremarkable advice, I wrote him an email.

I told him the story of an Irish Catholic woman from over fifty years ago whose youngest son was effeminate, creative and quiet. Who was very unlike his father and brothers. They knew he was gay. Whatever the mother knew, she kept to herself. Any time she was with her son in public, there were no whispers of his being gay. No catcalls. No mocking. That lace curtain Irish woman had burning blue lasers for eyes. She ripped through more than one brain. Her tongue was a stiletto. The knife, not the heels. I saw her cut up people with loose tongues and empty heads.

People in our town did not talk behind my mother’s back. The phone tree would get back to her. Her wrath did one’s reputation no good.

She was the tough Irish Catholic woman whom I swear got a call every Friday morning for decades from the Vatican. It was the pope making his weekly confession. She told the popes their sins, gave them their penance and sent them on their way.

She didn’t believe in homosexuality. Especially not for her son. Even more than that, she was intolerant of ill-mannered fools.

After I’d passed the basics of that along to the writer of the column, I recommended that both he and the mother of that young boy get their acts together. We kill evil at the source. We deracinate it so that good may flourish.

Just because June is Pride month does not mean it is the only time we treat LGBTQ+ people with dignity, honor and respect.

We all treat each other that way every day of the year.

That’s what we do when God is on the line.

It’s how we become better people.