Today In Insanely Homophobic Statements From Small-Town Sports Columnists

Oh jeez. This is the kind of column you read, and then you do your due diligence to make sure it's not a parody news site. It's not! The Niagara Falls Reporter is real, and Lenny Palumbo is a real person, and he really wrote this.

Tucked at the bottom of a column bemoaning the wholly imagined crackdown on fighting in the NHL, is this—in Lenny Palumbo's mind, a continuation of his thought that the sport needs to stay tough and manly:

In spite of this, the league is determined to reduce fighting as much as possible. Meanwhile, the NHL's abominable, "You Can Play" promotion, which all but endorses homosexuality in hockey, is among its top priorities. Thanks to Gary Bettman and his ilk, enforcers are out, but gays are in. So why don't they just hire Elton John as commissioner and be done with it?

Fortunately for Sabres fans, the team has not come out of the closet and the signing of tough guy, John Scott is an indication there might be some shred of manliness left in an otherwise emasculated organization that has much to prove in 2012-13.

Oh, Lenny. Oh man, Lenny.

I don't think we need to go into why this is so fucked up, or why Patrick Burke's "You Can Play" movement is a good thing (and not an NHL initiative!). There's plenty of logic-based Palumbo smackdown at Pension Plan Puppets and Battle of California, should you want some. Instead, we'll just eagerly await the day when a Buffalo enforcer also happens to be gay, and Lenny Palumbo's neolithic brain explodes.