Christopher Pearson, and fine examples of shallow arguments sinking in the shallow end of the pond ...

(Above: More links to cartoons here).

First of all a group think hug.

This is crunch time ...The onus is on the government to supply the information. Or the network plan ... will collapse. And Labor's credibility will collapse with it. (Peter Hartcher, Strike up the broadband).

The broadband network has become a make-or-break test for Gillard Labor.

While the idea of a National Broadband Network retains popular appeal, this issue is undermining the economic reputation, financial credibility and governance standards of Gillard Labor. (Paul Kelly, NBN heat is on and it'll keep rising).

The dogs are barking - well Kelly is baying in the true style of a minion of Murdoch - and once again hysterical denunciation and theatrical exaggeration becomes the tone of the debate. Once again Barnaby Joyce wins, and what a splendidly empty, shallow, hollow victory it might turn out to be ...

Meanwhile, speaking of shallow hysterics and denunciations, each Saturday we can always rely on Christopher Pearson to set the tone, and his Gay marriage demands should be left on the shelf is yet another splendid of example of ways to save the Latin mass from the liberal mob ...

The tag runs The most obvious thing about arguments for same-sex marriage is their shallowness.

Pearson then obliges by showing how the arguments against can be equally shallow.

It is of course couched in a way that shows a deep concern for the Labor party:

Running the risk of alienating so much of your traditional support base, at this stage in federal Labor's history, is daylight madness. At least Gillard seems to have grasped that fact.

Yes, the principled Pearson is deeply concerned by the attitudes of voters in western Sydney, some parts of suburban Melbourne, and the north Tasmanian seats of Bass and Lyons, though it seems the inner suburbs might have to be written off as a dead loss.

Yes polling as principle strikes again. Next week? Look forward to a column about cynical poll driven politicians lacking principle ...

As well as the polls, there's also religion:

There is another core constituency, sometimes overlapping, who have been critical to Labor's victories in the past two elections. I'm talking about not just the Christian vote but the votes of people who are adherents of all the main, organised religions.

Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists all take the institution of marriage very seriously. As things stand, Labor can normally count on a fair share of those people's votes. However, the electoral implications of giving them a faith-based reason for voting for the Coalition are obvious.

Yes principled Pearson is deeply concerned, not just about Christians - why he astutely fails to mention his Catholic fundamentalism throughout his piece - but religions of all shades and hues.

It reminds me that we don't live in a secular state but rather should kowtow to all the religious and their various views, and if we were deeply serious about not offending anyone on the matter of homosexuality, perhaps it's time to revert to the laws that govern such wise countries as Malaysia - where the laws against sodomy prove very handy when it comes to dealing with political opposition - or perhaps Uganda, where fundie Christians have taken fundamental steps ...

And perhaps once we're done with that, we can move on to adopt the - admittedly conflicting - religious attitudes to dress, to eating habits, to circumcision, and to pork that will prevent various religions getting upset about the wicked ways of the world ...

Then of course there are the blue collar workers, regularly cited by the commentariat as reasons to do nothing, except perhaps drink beer and indulge in a glassing or two as an expression of tribal rituals:

The blue-collar social conservatives of the outer suburbs inhabit a less theoretical world. They are often unapologetically tribal in outlook and their best hopes are often invested in their children.

Most parents on low wages routinely make sacrifices on their kids' behalf in ways middle-class couples seldom do these days. There is also still something self-sacrificial among many of them on marriage: the notion that it's hard work much of the time but worth the effort.

Yes, as a summary of a bunch of unsubstantiated prejudices about self-sacrificing tribalism, that surely wins the blue collar wanker of the week award.

But you know, in true paranoid Glenn Beck style, there's surely something much deeper at work here, perhaps a UN conspiracy which subverts the entire basis of western civilisation, and perhaps even involves black helicopters:

Speaking of dead ends, some American bishops have recently given a persuasive account of why same-sex marriage has come to look like a modest reform. They put it down to a culture where contraception and abortion are so widely practised that the crucial differences between a fertile couple, a couple childless by choice and a gay couple have been largely obscured and each partnership is seen as morally equivalent. They also lay some of the blame on a UN version of entitlement, in which marriage could be reduced to an unqualified abstract right.

Sob, yes, it's not just selfish couples it's the UN. On the other hand, you might find linking contraception, abortion, fertility and gay rights, not so much shallow, but actually utterly bizarre, the kind of thing only the paranoid or the religious might manage ...

But hang on, Christians didn't invent marriage, so how come they get to determine what is a qualified un-abstract right? Frankly I blame all of it on the Christian version of entitlement ...

Steady, clearly I'm not fully aware of the deeper paranoid perspective, which explains why, along with the UN, the Greens are so active. It has nothing to do with principles of fairness or equality, but part of their shocking deep secret furtive agenda to undermine western civilisation as we know it:

Among the reasons the Greens are so keen on same-sex marriage is that they want to reduce the population and drive down national fertility. Their refusal to discriminate positively in favour of heterosexuality and uphold the distinctive value of normal marriage shows their political project yet again for what it is: a dead end.

Uh huh. Yes, same sex marriage will surely drive down national fertility, as people swap the desire to breed for the bliss of a homosexual union.

What a deeply unshallow sensible argument. But hang on a second, who scribbled this?

It should be obvious to unprejudiced observers that, while there are plenty of well-adjusted gays who manage to lead satisfying and productive lives, rational people do not of their own volition choose to be homosexual.

Say what? There'll still be a few breeders left to help drive up national fertility? And they'll be rational?

Then of course there are the splendid arguments in favour of traditional marriage, as propounded by a sentimentalist who, to my knowledge, has never been married.

What this set of cliches and stereotypes has to do with whether same sex marriage is a goer is hard to determine, but never mind, here they are:

... the few remaining privileges reserved for matrimony are there for sound, practical reasons.

Men and women tend to have different needs and priorities when they enter a mature sexual relationship.

Most men are not naturally disposed to be monogamous, for example. One of the purposes of marriage is to bind them to their spouses and children for the long haul and to give the state's approval to those who enter such a contract and abide by its terms.

Uh huh. So marriage is after all, just a legal contract, and it turns out, a pretty shoddy one, often not worth the paper it's printed on:

In Australia, every third marriage ends in divorce;
About 29% of Australians never marry;
During the past two decades, Australians started to marry less and divorce more;
About one-third of children today are born outside the traditional marriage ... (here)

So much for the long haul, and abiding by contractual terms. Perhaps what we need is an oral contract, which is certainly not worth the paper it's written on ...

Another of the purposes of marriage is to affirm that parenthood is a big, and in most cases the primary, contribution a couple can make, both to their own fulfilment and the public good.

Yes, but what about gay couples who are making an affirmation of parenthood, and doing the best they can by the children in their care, and wanting to make a primary, contribution to these children? Should they continue to have the status of bastard outcasts?

It follows that societies which want to sustain their population size, let alone increase their fertility level, should positively discriminate in favour of stable, heterosexual relationships and assert the preferability of adolescents making a normal transition to heterosexual adulthood.

Uh huh. Or else we'll be swamped by hordes of fertile people descending from the north. Not that we're paranoid, nor ready to do our duty by the country by getting out and breeding, when typing columns sounding the alarm is a kind of duty ...

It seems, if you happen to be a paranoid believer in normality, if you hang around gays, why it could well be impossible to make a normal transition to heterosexual adulthood. That's the way it is with homosexuals. Once they get their hands on the children, the next thing you know they're grooming them for a life of sin, far removed from the stable heterosexual relationships that exist in Pearson's principled mind, but which seem a little more remote in the real world ...

Well there you have it, a set of arguments so deeply shallow that it shows exactly why Pearson is such a fine thinker, and would be at home in Catholic Spain or Argentina ...

But we should also note his deep thinking by way of rebuttal, the kind of thing you need in the last frenetic moments of any debate:

She (Michelle Grattan) told ABC Radio National's Breakfast show this week that Julia Gillard would have to change tack on the subject, preferably sooner rather than later.

Mind you, she was talking to the show's presenter, Fran Kelly, whose agenda on same-sex issues is well known, and to some extent may have been framing her remarks accordingly.

Uh huh. So now it's the pink mafia pursuing their notorious agenda within the ABC, in consort with the Fairfax press. Yes, it's not just the Greens and the UN, it's Fairfax and the lesbian Kelly in cohorts:

Grattan's argument is the same sort of vulgar inevitabilism that she, Paul Kelly and the press gallery at large displayed on the outcome of the republican referendum. But Kelly at least has more of a feel for the values of blue-collar workers in the outer suburbs. As he says, Arbib's push to change the law on marriage "testifies to how politicians can be fooled by opinion polls and miss the bigger picture".

And what is Paul Kelly's principled stand, deeply concerned as he is too for the values of blue-collar workers, in what might be dubbed the vulgar triumphalism of the blue collar?

"Why is it time?" Kelly asked. "Because the Greens are stealing Labor's votes, that's why. So Labor should cynically abandon its support for the foundational social institution, a move that will trigger a deeply polarising debate and brand Labor indelibly as a libertarian personal rights party ready to ditch any institution or principle. In the process, Labor will alienate permanently an important section of its base."

Lordy, lordy, how shocking, to become branded as a libertarian personal rights party, and shockingly ready to ditch any institution or principle ... by allowing more people to participate in it.

Well enough already from the conservative commentariat deeply concerned about Labor alienating an important section of its base.

It's sufficient that it alienates the likes of Paul Kelly, Christopher Pearson, and of course humbugs who've resolutely avoided the state of marriage, to get hitched to Christ and run, in true George Pell style, retrograde religions determined to do whatever they can to give gay people a hard time ...

Having tried it several times, I'm in a handy position to recommend the institution of marriage to everyone, and let anyone who wants to, give it a go ... And the more times the better, even if there are a few doubters or a few punters, like Pearson, unwilling to line up at the crease for a bat ...

Marriage is a fine institution - but I'm not ready for an institution - Mae West.

There isn't a single argument in Pearson's piece which isn't in its own way, a simple minded appeal to current and past prejudices ...

Yep, whenever we want to go for a swim in the shallow end of the pond, Pearson is always there to oblige ...

Can someone find the funds to send him off to Catholic Spain to see how the blue collar worker values he so piously espouses have been seriously undermined by recent legislation?

Only a one way ticket of course, and cheap at half the price ... and sssh, don't tell him, if he finds a nice boy, he can get married and settle down there ... permanently ...

(Below: a few more cartoons to suit the stereotypical days of our lives).