I can’t recall what show I was watching—I really wasn’t paying attention.

Some conservative pundit was ranting about something that wouldn’t even bother most people. Terms like morality, right, and wrong, were bandied about, and the people about whom he was speaking sounded like the cretin of the earth, the way he described them.

Then I thought to myself, oh my God, what does he care, really? Why should it matter what homeless people do? They’re people, just like he is, who want to love and be loved—only, they have it worse because they’re down on their luck, with no place to go and no way to get clean. Why knock them when they’re down? Why condemn them for their sexuality? That’s just petty and mean.

And I couldn’t figure out why he kept bringing it up with such a strident, disapproving tone of voice: homeless sexuality. Homeless sexuality.

What the hell does it matter what bums do behind closed doors anyway—that is, if they can manage to find a private place?

And then it hit me. I heard him all wrong.

He said homosexuality.

It didn’t make his ranting any more right, but at least I felt a little less retarded.

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