Almost everyone, believer or not, knows or at least recognizes the “Serenity Prayer.” It may be best known as a prayer recited at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step groups.

The bereavement group I attended in Farmington closed every meeting with the prayer. I wish more organizations used the prayer, opening, during or at the end of their meetings.

Here’s the entire prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The heart of the prayer is accepting what we don’t understand, which is, at base, the things we cannot change.

This column started out being about accepting people different from ourselves. Mostly about straight, white folks accepting LGBTQ and Black and brown folks. And we won’t abandon that line of thought entirely, though the runup to the Super Bowl on Sunday added a bizarre twist.

I’m one of those straight, white folks. I simply do not understand the sexual attraction that some men feel toward other men and that some women feel toward other women. But I accept it.

Before Maine’s second vote on same-sex marriage, my late wife, Marilyn, asked: “Who gets hurt if two people of the same sex marry?” As usual, she was the smartest person in the room.

The obvious answer is that no one gets hurt when two people of the same sex marry. Just as no one is hurt when two people of opposite sexes marry. But the way some people react, you’d think that two women in love down the street would destroy the neighborhood. I think that’s an overly emotional reaction to a reality we weren’t taught about when we were younger.

Coming up, we were taught that romance occurs over a far narrower range than it does, in fact, occur. But even back then, the subject did arise. A female friend of my mother lived with another woman. Without saying it directly, Mother let us know the women were not a “normal” couple.

Guess what. I figured it out. At a young age. The women couldn’t marry, but they loved each other under the radar, so to speak. Earth didn’t stop spinning because a woman loved a woman.

If we trudge too deeply into these weeds we come to the T in LGBTQ. I’m too conflicted here to delve into transsexuality. Maybe some other time. For now, let’s get back to “straight” love.

In the Super Bowl, love and sports were on the biggest stage of all, with 115 million people watching Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, together until after the game. Swift may be the biggest-ever pop star, though Beyonce could give her a run, and Kelce may be the best-ever tight end.

Then, it gets weird. MAGAnuts began attacking the romance last month as a conspiracy, perhaps based in the Pentagon, to win support for President Biden.

Adam Gabbatt wrote in The Guardian that conspiracy theorists believe “Swift is a ‘Pentagon asset,’ an ‘election interference psyop (psychological operative)’” who has conspired with leftists “to ‘rig’ the Super Bowl and then endorse Joe Biden in the presidential election.”

Gabbatt quotes Jack Posobiec, a right-wing conspiracist, who said before the Super Bowl: “They’re gearing up for an operation to use Taylor Swift in the election against everything. Against Trump, for Biden. They’re gonna get her and all — you know they call them the Swifties — they’re going to turn those into voters. You watch.” So, urging fans to vote is a plot?

Posobiec did not say who “they” are. A tip on critical thinking: If someone doesn’t specify who “they” are, tune out. The guy has nothing worth learning to say.

A troll, ironically named Lombardi, said Kansas City winning the Super Bowl would prove that a White House conspiracy had set it up to get an endorsement from Swift for President Biden. He said the romance was created to “manipulate the feelings of American women.” Really?

This should be a classic rom-com. Pop star falls for football star, attends his games as he did her concert. Both attractive, both sure of themselves, both open to fans. What’s not to like?

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat summed it up nicely in The New York Times: “A story where the famous pop star abandons her country roots and spends years dating unsuccessfully in a pool of Hollywood creeps and angsty musicians, only to find true love in the arms of a bearded heartland football player … I mean, this is a Hallmark Christmas movie! This is an allegory of conservative Americana! This is itself a right-wing meme!” (Italics his.)

His fellow conservative at The Times, David French, cast the brouhaha into a larger context: “This era of American politics will end, one way or the other. And, when it does, historians are likely to debate whether its defining characteristic was stupidity or malice.” Stupidity and malice “have almost fully merged. Malice is creating stupidity, and stupidity is creating malice.”

And as comedian Ron White accurately put it, “You can’t fix stupid.” But can we fix malice?

I have lived as an “other” most of my life. A “Yankee” (from Missouri!) in Tennessee in the 1950s and again the late ‘60s, a white man in Harlem in the ‘60s, Anglophone in Quebec in the ‘70s, flatlander in Maine since 1980.

An outlier. I got used to it.

Bob Neal believes America’s strength lies in its diversity. We are not all alike and, as the French say, Vivre les differences. Neal can be reached at [email protected].