In which the reptiles of Oz try to sound sensible and reasonable, and are set right by their readership, and the books are balanced by Dame Slap calling for a biblical understanding of marriage ...

Yes, yes, big Mal, a noble speech, a worthy speech, a considered and balanced speech, but you fudged it as well.

Time will tell, you said, sounding like a nervous kitten or a tantalising, teasing southern belle.

But will you brave the step-sisters and appear at the Q and A ball? It will all be meaningless blather if you don't step up to the plate and take the gig.

Let's not forget who has been the heart and soul of the hysterical demonising and fear-mongering. Let's not forget who made you break Godwin's Law and invoke Hitler's Germany and Stalinist Russia.

And let's not forget the wretched, shameful and shameless reptiles of the Murdochian media, cranking the emperor's banishing and banning and shunning ways up to eleven:

Pure, undiluted filth. The pond feels like it's publishing particularly dirty and offensive pornography.

Unfortunately, Ray Martin's suggestion that everyone take a Bex and have a good lie down establishes the lad's age, and also suggests he learnt nothing about phenacetin causing kidney disease.

So his prescription would be meaningless to anyone born since the powders were taken off the market, or damaging if the innocents could manage to get hold of the drug.

Besides, the pond can guarantee the drug would do nothing for Abbottinitus, a condition that routinely afflicts the pond ...

Already one hapless old chook has succumbed to the hysteria and burst back into the media cycle by talking about the need to send furriners back to where they came from, while standing just behind her could be seen the shadowy figures of Tony Abbott and Pauline Hanson applauding ...

Sigh, okay, the pond apologises to the chooks of the world who in no way have earned that metaphor ...

But enough of the gay banter. How goes it in reptile la la land this bright and chilly morn?

Well naturally the beavering Sharri beavered away to discover someone shocked and outraged by Ray Martin, though not for his Bex prescription. Apparently Sharri hasn't heard of phenacetin or she surely would have led with Martin's desire to poison the land:

And already the senatorial wolves are at Martin's door, slavering and howling.

But what's this? The reptiles of Oz have had a change of heart? Are they setting it up so you can return to the ABC, big Mal? 

Surely not, surely the Murdochians would remain stout-hearted and true?

Oh no, such treachery, such a shocking betrayal of all that Murdochians believe in. No childish and petulant talk of banning and banishments and shunning? Outrageous.

It was left to the readers of the lizard Oz, deeply intoxicated from their daily imbibing of the kool aid, to person the fort and save the day, and put the naive editorialist in his or her place:

Indeed, well said Michael and thanks for quoting Paul Keating and finally establishing that whatever he might be, he was and is certainly not a sneering and shouting ALP-type. Why butter never melted in his mouth.

But Michael wasn't the only one. The rest of the hive mind was all abuzz with outrage, but the pond bravely plunged into its own version of the X-files:

You see reptiles? Your rabid readership has spoken.

All of which delights the pond, because it shows how difficult it is now for any reptile in the lizard Oz to attempt to sound balanced, or attempt to deliver a little sanity to its readers. 

That's what happens when you feed them wall to wall hysteria and urge them to drink deep of the kool aid, year in year out. You end up with the barking mad as your readership, and barking mad you must stay if you wish to pursue your failed, failing business model to the bitter end of newsprint ...

But enough of this gay banter, because today - hold the ink, stop the presses, sling the lead - is Dame Slap day. 

Now the pond has been ignoring Dame Slap for too long, and so it behoves the pond to pay attention to the good Dame fighting a valiant rearguard action, though surely she's come a little late to the 2GB party:

Ah, it's her old "lawyer berates other lawyers" routine, which is not as tasty as her "the UN is using climate science to establish a world government" line, but it'll do pig, it'll do ... because the illustration is alone worth the price of entry:

Uh huh. Of course it's activist when it goes against anything that rabid ratbag Justice Scalia might say, but simply judicial judiciousness when the ratbag right wingers on the court embark on one of their outrageous rants and activist judgments.

But do go on Dame Slap, do go on ...

No, no, Dame Slap, the pond is made of sterner stuff, we're happy to keep reading, on the basis that the reading is worth exactly what the pond has paid for it.

But can we bear in mind your thought bubble about how shocking it might be that people might decide to change the definition of marriage "as an act of will", even though King David himself seemed to have changed the understanding of marriage way back when by getting hitched to any number of wives, as you can Greg Hunt in King David's wives:

And David went on, and grew great, and the LORD God of hosts was with him...

And David took him more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem, after he was come from Hebron: and there were yet sons and daughters born to David...

Those were the days, but do go on Dame Slap, do go on and on, and worship at the scaly feet of Scalia:

Yes, in the bizarre land of Scalia California doesn't count as western, thereby completely changing the concept of west as a compass might apply the law, and speaking of playing the person, not the law, how about that personal assault on a court we're assured is made up of heathens and barbarians, including Scalia himself. Will he resign? In your dreams ... 

You have to drink deeply of the kool aid to sit by Scalia's side, but what says the Dame of the local court?

But hang on, hang on, does this mean that anyone might decide that marriage can mean what they want it to mean?

Well yes, it seems so:

Uh huh. So the definition of the word has been as long-settled as ... King David ... who by most counts was hanging around c1010-970 BCE and fits the millennia bill ... and as many other examples of odd ideas about marriage as you can be bothered to find in the Old and New Testaments.

To coin a phrase, just who do the Australian people think they are to single-handedly decide that marriage includes multiple wives, when, for millennia and for anyone who has actually read the bible, marriage has meant the union between a man and many women ... 

And that's before we get on to the officially approved incest in Exodus and Lamech in Genesis and Abraham and Jacob and Solomon and all the other multiple wive types approved by the long absent lord ...

And so on and on.

As for the need to conduct a referendum, and mount all sorts of mischief, or a plebiscite, which would be no more than an opinion poll and a hundred million dollar one at that ... suddenly we need to consult everyone, as opposed to electing law-makers to make laws, as a way of getting Tony Abbott off his fundamentalist hook?

Now the pond is aware that Dame Slap has had her own problems with definitional matters about marriage being monogamous and for life, but setting that aside, wouldn't it be more honest for her to simply admit that she's opposed to gay marriage? 

Instead of lurking behind the skirts of delaying tactics and referendums?

The alternative is for her to keep blathering on about history and millennia, thereby revealing she doesn't have much of a clue about either ...

And so to the in-form Rowe, and more Rowe here.