John blinks, unfamiliar with the term, though he understands what it is that it means. Homo -- from the Greek, of course. Clever, in a way. And yet he isn't certain that he likes it very much at all. Not that sodomite he supposes is really any better.

He glances back up to her from his tea at her reassurances, the look in his eyes at once guarded and painfully open, for a man such as himself. This is not an easy topic of conversation. It is a secret he has guarded for most of his life, after all.

"Does society really change so much, in so little time?" he asks softly.

Jim, he understands. Jim is from a future that John can only begin to understand, but Mary. They are similar, their lives are built upon the same traditions and structures, and there is only -- what, a century and change between them?