"Who ARE these people?"

Yesterday, LISNews linked to a post by self-described "conservative librarian" Bert Chapman, who blogs at townhall.com, in which Mr. Chapman made the "economic case against homosexuality." For those of you who might entertain fleeting hopes that he was taking the New York Times route, and tabulating the cost of homophobic discrimination against gay couples in our society, I am sad to report that this is not the case. No. Instead, Mr. Chapman tries to argue that "our nation cannot afford the extremely high financial costs of this [homosexual] lifestyle."

I realize that open-mindedness and empathy for one's fellow human beings are not legally-enforcible prerequisites for the library science profession -- but, damn there are days when I sure as hell wish they were.

The people I am glad to call fellow-professionals, however, are the folks who took the time to post comments on the LISNews item. You are all made of awesome (as Hanna would say) and remind me why I think librarians are some of the coolest people around. A sampling of comments thus far:

"oh, yes, the shopping. I had to give up the lifestyle when I couldn't afford the clothing."

"'Lifestyle' - really? Really? I can't believe people still use that word in this context."

"There are a number of lifestyles I object to. The idiot lifestyle, the bigot lifestyle, the uneducated lifestyle, the fearmongering lifestyle, the use-of-the-word-"lifestyle" lifestyle, the describing someone's existence as a lifestyle, the vile hate disguised as a scholarly opinion lifestyle, the cowardly bully lifestyle and the sub-literate Townhall columnist lifestyle."

And my personal favorite: "Who ARE these pathetic bigots and how in Hell did they land in my profession? Get OUT..."