Time we set some people straight

I was chatting with an elderly relative, who leaned in close to say the son of a friend had ‘turned queer’.

This was not delivered as titillating news: but as bad news, as something horrifying.

I briefly considered my reply: ‘So?’ or ‘He hasn’t turned queer, he was always queer. And, anyway, queer is an offensive term.’ I calculated how much arguing I would be required to do to nudge the world view of a man in his early 80s.