Ask JT! Meanie Grandpas, Messy Roomies, and Wonky Gaydar.

As always, your friendly neighborhood bartender is taking a break from his wild dating life to tackle your questions with his patented blend of advice and adult beverages. So slide on up to the bar my friends. Now, what can I get you?

Hey JT,

I have an issue that’s not too huge, but it’s been weighing on me for a while.

I was brought up to respect my elders like a good little Catholic boy, and while I'm no longer good, Catholic, or a little boy, I have tried my hardest to maintain respect for my elders, if for no other reason than I’d like to be respected when I’m old and I’m hoping to procure some good karma.

Here’s my issue. My grandfather, who I’m forced to see every single holiday, is kind of a blowhard. All the Republican stuff, I can look past. But I’m fully out as both gay and as a non-religious person, and all he does every holiday dinner is expound on his right-wing beliefs at the dinner table, particularly about how all the “minorities” are ruining America.

I know you had answered a question like this with some guy’s asshat uncle, but this is a little different. My grandfather doesn’t get drunk and rave. He presents clear-cut and articulated thoughts, which make it all that much more disturbing. He’s in his late ‘70s, and I’m pretty sure there’s nothing that can be done to change his mind. I’d like to correct him when he explains all the BS reasons why gay people shouldn’t be allowed to get married, but my mom says out of respect I should just keep silent. So what should I do? Any help would be much appreciated.

And I’d like a bourbon, neat, please.

Asshat Grandpa Exudes Icky, Sh*tty Talk

Your bourbon is coming right up, AGEIST.

You know, your letter reminds me of a revelation I had a few years ago after seeing one too many ancient queens being nasty to their fellow patrons as they sat at my bar. That revelation was this:

Old people are just people who’ve lived a really long time.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t respect your elders. You should (within reason), and most old people have earned a little leeway through sheer force of their admirable will to live.

What's more, the older you are, the more you've learned throughout the years, and the more life experience you've accumulated. That's a pretty killer resource to bring to the table. When I'm involved in a multi-generational conversation, I tend to automatically perceive the opinions of the oldest people in the room as having a little more weight than some of the more uppity youngsters.

But guess what? If they’re being dicks, they don’t get a total pass. They’re still being dicks. Just … you know, old dicks.

Getting older sucks, because every day is a reminder that you’re no longer on the cutting edge of whatever cultural force you belong to. I know this, because I'm already feeling it, and I was born in the '80s. For a lot of people, their reaction is to grow defensive when this phenomonon begins to occur. But that doesn’t mean they have a right to monopolize the conversation and only allow their views to be permitted.

You know how I was talking about those old bitches at my bar? Well, I had another older gent who used to come in who was one of my absolute favorite patrons. His real name was Bob Smith, but for the purposes of anonymity let’s call him Buttgrab McGee. Now old Buttgrab was getting on in years, but seemingly every day he came into the bar with the latest gadget. He had a palm pilot before everyone, an iPod before everyone, a Blackberry, a smart phone, a tablet, you get the idea.

“So Buttgrab,” I said to him one day, “what’s up with all the gadgets? You’re like a James Bond villain.”

“Well, JT,” Buttgrab replied, “Here's how I see it. The minute you check out of the technology game, that’s the minute you get old.”

He made a good point. Buttgrab was way more youthful than a lot of guys half his age, because he refused to ever stop learning things. Once you throw up your hands and say you will no longer learn anything new, that's when you've become old.

It's true what they say. "Old" isn't a number. It's an attitude.

Speaking of which, I remember copping a royally bitchy 'tude when Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers started getting popular, not because their music was any crappier than the pop music was when I was a kid, but because I had decided I was so far above them that I wasn’t even going to learn their names. That’s how out of the loop I wanted to be. I was taking a stand, god dammit.

But guess what they made me sound like? An old curmudgeon. I didn’t have to like their music, but if I wanted to stay relevant in the world of pop culture (which, when you write for the Internet, is a necessity), I needed to get over it and at least admit I knew who they were.

Now, what's the point I'm meandering towards? It's that no one gets to check out, decide they don't want to learn anything new anymore, and yet still be included in relevant conversation. If your grandfather is putting his opinions out there, then he's inviting a rebuttal to his statements.

So basically, elderly people are entitled to a little more respect than you would give to your peers, but that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to run unchecked when spouting nonsense. For example, Ruben Diaz is a hell of a lot older than I am, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t punch him in the face if I ever got an opportunity.

Let me end with a little anecdote my best friend Jessie told me when she was over her friend’s house at the same time as her friend’s elderly aunt. There they were at the dinner table, and the hunched over, white-haired old aunt leaned over the table, looked at Jessie and her friend, and said, “I don’t get what the big deal is about anal. We used to do that all the time when I was younger. I don't know why you girls are making such a fuss nowadays.”

"Sheesh. You kids these days, I tell ya."

Okay, that’s not really relevant to your question. I just thought that was a really funny story and couldn't figure out how to fit it into an SGM column.

That's some funny sh*t, though, right?

Come on, an old lady talking about anal? Hilarious!