Gary Johns, Barry Cohen, Bob Ellis, and a good day for the eel bashers ...

(Above: would you marry this dog? Go on, go on, where's the harm? Or are you part of some giant homosexual conspiracy with a hidden agenda?)

Astonishing news.

Gary Johns has discovered that racial hatred goes back twenty years in Australia.

Yep, in Not equal when it comes to being offensive, he scribbles these immortal words:

Behrendt, Gibson and others may like to reflect on where 20 years of racial hatred, of the white man, has landed Aborigines.

Only twenty years? That's a relief, and what a relief the racial hatred seems to be on a one way street. But never satisfied, the upward and onward striving Johns delivers a capper:

They may like to consider that the two most egregious instances of public racial vilification in Australia in the past two decades were the Aboriginal deaths in custody report (1991) and the report on the separation of Aboriginal children and their families (1997).

Oh yes, those pesky blacks and their racially vilifying ways. Naturally it's the whites who are aggrieved:

The deaths in custody inquiry began knowing that black deaths in custody were at a rate similar to white. There was no agitation to investigate white deaths.

Indeed. And then it dawned on me that if you follow Johns' line of logic we could arrive at the satisfying situation where the pesky blacks should simply apologise for their temerity in getting agitated occasionally at the way the British simply marched in and took over a terra nullius country, because after all, the blacks were simply an exotic part of the fauna (yes, and there's Linda Burney back in 2007 daring to remember the days when she was counted among the nation's wildlife in When I was fauna: citizen's rallying call).

Standing by, vilifying pesky blacks, for that 'sorry' day when you apologise for all the hurt and damage you've caused simple, humble white folk, and for all the mischief and heartache you've caused, and all the emotional misery ...

Is it racial vilification to call Johns a wombat?

Meanwhile, it wouldn't be a good day for The Australian if it couldn't follow up Johns with Barry Cohen doing his bit for tolerance and acceptance in Opposing gay marriage doesn't mean I'm barking.

Cohen starts off his hymn to intolerance thusly:

I'm in love with Jamie and Hamish, before that it was Fergus and Dougal. Now that I've got that off my chest I sense an enormous feeling of relief. No more regrets. No more hiding my preferences. Everyone knows now. I can relax.

Despite that, I don't plan to marry any of them, primarily because I don't like nails down my back during the night even if they are those of a border collie. Which brings us into the topic du jour: gay marriage.

Yes indeed when thinking of gays and gay marriage the first thing that springs to mind is border collies and bitches on heat, and dogs fucking and perhaps even zoophilia leading to marriage.

Is it racial discrimination to call Barry Cohen a vile dinosaur?

But you see that's the basis, in the end, for Cohen's argument opposing gay marriage. It's the floodgates theory. If you let gays lead a life of conservative married bliss, where might this dangerous trend end?

A lot has happened in the past 40 years that has been of benefit to the gay community. Some I agreed with, others went too far, but marriage between people of the same sex giving them equal status with heterosexual couples, in my view, goes way beyond the pale. They argue that the present law discriminates against them. It does. And it's the same reason why I can't marry Jamie or Hamish.

Yes, gays getting married is roughly equivalent to Cohen getting married to a border collie.

Let's hope the border collie would have the good taste to tell him to fuck off, he's not interested in rough trade, fuzzy logic, or irrational, deeply rooted homophobia.

But of course dogs are just a stepping stone:

And how about the discrimination against pedophiles, prohibiting sexual relations with children?

Indeed. Gays getting married is just another way to favour pedophiles (well we all know that gays have a dangerous radical agenda, way worse than a Roman Catholic priest). And then there are even more complex, deep, and philosophically tricky questions:

Why do we discriminate against 15-year-old girls and boys for what used to be called carnal knowledge? Why do we ban men from entering women's toilets or vice versa? I could go on but I'm sure you discern my drift. We discriminate because society believes it is the right and moral thing to do.

Why oh why indeed.

Is it possible to discriminate against Barry Cohen? Dear absent lord, show me the way, and I'll discriminate as much as I can, but calling him a silly old fart simply doesn't cut it in the discrimination stakes. Not up against this kind of rhetoric:

Marriage was considered, until recently, sacrosanct. Bigamy and polygamy are banned. Why should we discriminate against men who want more than one wife, or wives who want more than one husband?

With all its flaws, and few marriages are perfect, marriage is the bedrock on which our society is based. It won't be if these twerps have their way.

Actually marriage is the bedrock for divorce in contemporary society, but it's the use of 'twerps' that really gets things going. It dates the writer as somewhere in the Jurassic age, and someone who can be regarded, in a slang sense, as insignificant and contemptible in the quality of their thinking and their argument.

Still, at least Cohen has finally come out of the closet, and admits that any connection he might have had to the Labor party or the left is a long faded memory. By golly, does he roll out his fear and loathing in a fine-feathered display of sneering and bile:

The subject was raised and any doubts as to whether Q&A stacks its audience with a Left bias were dismissed by the sneering, booing and ridicule at any member of the panel who was less than enthusiastic about gay marriage. The inference was that those who opposed it were homophobic and-or barking mad (no pun intended).

Barking mad? Well if you spurn a border collie, how are they expected to react?

This tactic has been used by the Green-gay lobby because they are well aware there is nothing the cognoscenti and commentariat dislike more than to be called right-wing, neo-conservative or redneck. One's views on same-sex marriage, climate change, hatred of Israel and the US guarantees you acceptance by the cafe latte set. Just in case you hadn't realised it by now, I'm of the view that the idea of two people of the same sex being "married" is absurd. But homophobic, I think not. Unlike many of the "in" crowd I have runs on the board.

Yes, that's the way it always runs. Some of my best friends are poofters, I just love poofters, they remind me of border collies with their quaint ways and aspirations.

Talk about runs on the board ...

And now back to the rhetoric:

The time has come for us "neocons" to fight back and tell the gay community that we've gone from prohibition to tolerance to acceptance, but we won't accept that gay marriage and conventional marriage is the same thing.

Acceptance? Except of course for homosexuals who want to marry border collies.

It is to be hoped that those who support conventional marriage as one of the building blocks on which our society is built will stand up and tell the gay community it's not going to happen. Not even if hell freezes over.

Well that's a relief. You see hell has already frozen in various parts of the world, including Catholic Argentina and Spain, so there's a good chance that my eternity in hell will actually be spent learning to ice skate and to ski.

Finally, it would be nice to report that there's a more elevated level of discourse over at the ABC, but there's Bob Ellis at it again, disgracing himself with Why are heads rolling at the ADFA? A few took Ellis seriously, and Michael Brull even penned a response, Bob Ellis, you can't possibly be serious, but the point surely should be that it's impossible to take Ellis seriously, whether he's seriously inclined or not ...

Still, it reminded me of all my favourite Ellis anecdotes, starting with his theory that you should ask every woman you meet for a fuck, and if you score one in a hundred, or even one in a thousand, you're ahead. Then there was his theory about why you shouldn't wash or shower, especially after sex, because the whiff of sexual juices and sweat would so inflame the average woman she'd ravage you on the spot. And then there was his theory of sperm lines, whereby, if you'd led a decent sexual life, you could within six fucks, or degrees of separation, find yourself in the same bed as Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe ... And so on and so forth, remembering to dribble tomato sauce on to the tie while offering this understanding of the universe.

All in all a great day for the pond, reminding everyone that black bashing, gay bashing, and the bashing of women remains a solid spectator sport in the lucky country, and especially for readers of The Australian. (With the ABC chipping in wherever it can ...)

Well you can't help your 8 cents a day, but do you still buy the lizard Oz?

Let me recommend an alternative, behind the paywall, but what the heck, if you're going to pay money, instead of the dross of Cohen and Johns, two retired Labor party hacks who should have been led off to the knackery and turned into glue years ago, you can read Ken Auletta on Murdoch's Best Friend What is Robert Thomson doing at the Wall Street Journal?

Oh yes, talk about border collies ...

(Below: would you give this man a fuck? Go on, go on, where's the harm, except to your self-esteem, and if you've read Johns and Cohen, that's long gone).