In which a late-breaking Devine moment is once again less than divine ...

As part of its bibliographic duties, the pond feels the need to keep track of homophobia as it turns up during the useless and very expensive postal survey commissioned by the clueless Malware ...

There's a particular urgency to this because in the next few days the pond might drop off the intertubes for some considerable time, thanks to Malware, the NBN, Telstra and the whole damn thing ...

Now it goes without saying that the Devine is a fundamentalist homophobic bigot of the first water, and is always particularly and peculiarly waspish in her scribbling ...

The pond should note that the Devine had that poster in question at the top of her column, but the pond refuses to show it, and is all the more pleased it did so because of the egregious error that Ten made (though how wonderful that CBS is trying to, or has snatched, the ailing network from the clutches of the Murdochians).

In any case, the pond is more interested in the kind of fundamentalist institutionalised and very threatening bigotry doing the rounds recently. There were assorted stories ...

That was in the Huff here, but the yarn also turned up in Fairfax here, and at other locations ...

The tykes, and Hart in particular, realised they'd gone a tad too far, and so scurried off to an Akker Dakker at the lizard Oz ...

Out of the mouth of a babe.

There it is in black and white, the Ponzi scheme church admitting that its schools are a place where Catholic propaganda is a prerequisite for teachers ...in much the same way that certain types couldn't get a gig in German schools and universities in the 1930s, or in Russian schools during the time of Stalin ...

As for that "weaken" line, one wag in the comments section wondered why the New Zealand All Blacks hadn't been seriously weakened ... but let's face it, Barners' team is full of manly men who can handle gay marriage (you see, not one sheep joke about Barners!)

The pond immediately reverted to Dr Strangelove and the line about the Commie conspiracy to sap and impurify precious bodily fluids ...

There's something seriously weird about Catholics - especially if you've seen them up close - and "weaken" is a word that gives the clue ... just watch Schepisi's The Devil's Playground and Arthur Dignam getting wobbly at the knees about the boys in the Melbourne baths to see someone "weaken"...

In all this, the pond almost forgot about the Devine ...

Sinister premise?

Only if you're a Devine paranoid.

A threat to your employment is a damn sight more sinister ... 

And then came the first ad ...

That's the reptile splash making it look heroic ...

To read about the homophobic bigotry, the pond preferred to head off to Fairfax here ...

The Coalition for Marriage's debut TV ad, which aired on commercial networks on Tuesday night, links marriage equality to sex education at schools. 
It claims that in countries which have legalised same-sex marriage, "parents have lost their rights to choose", and features an unidentified woman who says her son was told "he could wear a dress" to school. 
The ad, which has been uploaded to YouTube and was authorised by Sophie York of the Marriage Alliance, does not directly address the question of whether same-sex couples should be able to marry. But it features another unidentified woman who claims: "When same-sex marriage passes as law overseas, this type of [school] program becomes widespread and compulsory."
...The ad also drew criticism from the executive director of the Equality Campaign, Tiernan Brady, who labelled it "disgraceful and dishonest". 
"The people behind this ad know that the Australian people are for allowing all Australians the right to marry, so they have resorted to misleading people, to pretend this is about something else," he told Fairfax Media. "Sadly, over the next few weeks, the Australian people will get used to this daily dose of red-herrings and lies, served up by a bucketful of cash. As the no side seek to divide Australians, we will continue to seek to unite them."

Naturally Comrade Bill also turned up to slag off the ad, but the real crime here is that Malware, through incompetence and the pathetic, weasel way he had to introduce his voluntary, very expensive and useless postal survey, currently has no mechanism in place to address outrageous claims and homophobic slurs in advertising ...or to offer any penalties for same ...

Now the pond could link to the ad, but prefers not to.

Running the Devine is more than enough bigotry ... why just including the illustration for the next gobbet is a fine example of bigotry at work ...

Rainbow McCarthyism? Rainbow authoritarianism? And all the rest of the Devine crap?

And she wonders about the bigotry?

Well the Devine did stop short of talking of the SS and fascism, which is her usual Leakian manner ...

But not by much ...and so once again the pond felt the fragrant splash of the essence of Devine ...

For some strange reason, the pond was reminded of the Devine's climate denialism and the Donald, or is that too obvious a segue to a Pope cartoon, with more actually, really divine papery here?