Hunh.

[highlyeccentric]

Cool Story about 'living libraries' on Times Online

The idea, which comes from Scandinavia, is simple: instead of books, readers can come to the library and borrow a person for a 30-minute chat. The human “books” on offer vary from event to event but always include a healthy cross-section of stereotypes. Last weekend, the small but richly diverse list included Police Officer, Vegan, Male Nanny and Lifelong Activist as well as Person with Mental Health Difficulties and Young Person Excluded from School. I was there as Gay Man.

In the catalogue we had been tagged with the kind of negative attributes that readers might expect to encounter. Male Nanny was down as “twee” and “child molester”. Police Officer was filed under “corrupt”. Mine included “very well dressed” and “has some sexually transmitted disease”, though thankfully there was no mention of Barbra Streisand.

...

I had been borrowed by a trainee ordinand to the Church of England, and if there's any organisation that's facing some local difficulty with Gay Man, that's the one. I expected a rerun of my first outing, perhaps with a small detour via God, and was mentally revising some of my bons mots from the previous session when it turned out that this was going to be much more like a Q&A. Did I think civil partnerships would make gay relationships more stable? Should children be brought up by gay parents? How could the Church be more welcoming to gay people? It was slightly unsettling, not least because I wasn't sure that I had the answers, but after 30 minutes of this he seemed happy enough. I didn't learn much about Church of England ordinands.

Read. Is interesting.