In which the Oz editorialist offers a deeper debate, meaning a deeper level of humbug, prejudice and bigotry ...

Today there's not just a pastoral letter from the Catholic bishops peddling fundamentalist fear and loathing to hand.

Today there's also a pastoral letter from the Oz editorialist playing exactly the same tune.

Now the most important part of any reptile debate is how to introduce saucy doubts and fears.

Climate science was the most exemplary example. Fudging, questioning, running with Moorice and any other ratbag talking of UN world government - Dame Slap included - were just some of the fine Lomborgian tactics designed to confuse, conflate and undermine.

Worry about some data there, peddle a sceptical line here, encourage hesitation and delay ...

On the subject of gay marriage, the reptiles were, for a time, at a loss.

They didn't have the right angle, they hadn't worked out how to introduce the fog needed for all wars.

Then Freedom Boy came along, and at last the reptiles had their angle, and so the reptiles could unleash the saucy doubts and fears which had worked so splendidly for climate science.

Now the way this works is to lead off any discussion with a noble motherhood statement.

Yes, the reptiles readily accept climate science, and the need to reduce the impact of human activity.

And then you come out with a BUT billy goat, butt butt ... like a carbon tax is useless, and all the other arguments honed over the years.

(you can see them all here).

Once the motherhood thingie is out of the way, it's on with the deeper debate, and the marriage debate is now showing off all these skills, perfected over endless ideological years:

You see, there's the motherhood statement - of course the reptiles would endorse SSM - followed by a call for a 'deeper debate', preferably long and possibly interminable and never-ending, disappearing over the horizon until everyone packs up and goes home, or falls into a deep sleep when faced with the ennui and the tedium...

Freedom Boy was the first to grace the reptilian pages with handy hints and pointers.

And so to the butt, billy goat butt moment, which in this context can, just for the sake of virtuosic variation, be a YET.

And behind the YETI, that strange snow monster, you can drag the pompous Paul Kelly, and the Pellists, and the rest of the Catholics, and the US Supreme Court, and the Austrians, and all the other conservative forces who aren't really interested in the niceties of the arguments, because they are deeply, Talibanishly, fundamentally, opposed to gay rights, gay equality and gay talk of SSM:

It's a nonsense of course. Gay hatred is deeply embedded in the Catholic church, all the more curious because so many gays ended up working in the priesthood, yet taught a most curious form of cilice-loving, self-loathing guilt ... (fortunately the gay priest in the extended pond family seems to have come to a happier resolution).

Society is already harmonious and inclusive when it comes to gay marriage, at least if polls are to be trusted.

The fresh bitterness is just the same old vile bile from the gay haters, and those who will never give an inch ... the fundamentalist Christians and Islamics who routinely turn on their own when yet another turns out to be gay ...

The church booklet Don't Mess With Marriage gives a precise flavour of the hate doing the rounds.

Most people don't have a clue what the Catholic church gets up to in its taxpayer-funded schools, but you can get a fair idea by clicking on the pdf here. (Warning: the pond disclaims all liability).

Here's a sample:

And so on and so forth. Fear mongering, hysteria and a persecution complex developed while maintaining the desire to go on doing the persecuting ... and perhaps most shameless of all, the use of children as illustrations in the copy.

All the usual ironies - beyond 'won't someone think of the children by abusing their images' - apply.

Men who've taken a vow of chastity explaining the meaning of marriage.

Men who've ruled out having children talking of children and breeding, code for the Ponzi scheme that routinely needs fresh recruits ripe for indoctrination ...

State and federal governments routinely funding the indoctrination of children in a cannibalistic cult.

An inability to actually read the bible - a flaw in many Catholics, with the institution favoured over the word - and see what it says about other forms of marriage, and the bible's unholy approval of said other forms, along with approval of many other fine institutions, such as slavery and stoning to death, no longer deemed relevant, unless you happen to be gay in certain countries.

But the biggest irony is that the reptile editorialist has the cheek to talk of a more harmonious and inclusive attitude to gays and gay marriage.

As if the real attitude isn't already apparent in Tony Abbott's unharmonious and exclusive attitude ...

The bottom line? If you subscribe to or pay for a Murdoch rag, you are helping finance the spreading of this conservative humbug ... this delaying, this pious cry for a 'deeper debate' which is nothing more than window dressing for obfuscation and delay ...

If you happen to be gay, that constitutes a peculiar form of self-loathing, up there with the cilice ... unless you happen to think all marriage is a repressive institution, and things were better when you bumped into Joe Orton in a London toilet ... (now that would have been fun).

And funnily enough, when you think about it long enough, the two strands of medievalist thinking do somehow mystically join up, in the same way as munching on a wafer is exactly the same as eating real human flesh: