In which the pond drops in on nattering "Ned", only to go gibbering with Gibbon ...

The thing that's charming about the reptiles is the way they never get off their hot rocks, or leave their Surry Hills bunker, or otherwise stay in touch with the world.

Put hands over ears, hum 'la la' loudly, and all's well and there's no need to read stories such as Homophobic anti-marriage equality material surfaces in postal survey campaign ...

Yes, wretched cut and paster, it's not a postal plebiscite, it's an extraordinarily expensive postal survey, and there's a plague of homophobes out there, and being of the Xian persuasion, they know a lot about how to hate ...

The trouble of course is that if you print the material to demonstrate the bigotry visible on the surface of Australia, you just further the cause of the bigots (which is why the pond will leave the pictures to the Graudian).

Twitter tags like #auspol routinely, because unmoderated, contain vile material, particularly from one cesspit known as Redeeming Rainbow ... a haven of vile bigotry and malicious distortions and ugly associations of the SSM=gays=paedophilia kind ...

The pond refuses to run examples - why encourage the bigots? - and it makes many places on Twitter not worth a visit or a link, though that tag is a handy way to get a link to funny stories such as The Murdochs wanting media reform seems to have stopped media reform ... on just how tawdry, grubby and pathetic Malware can get when pandering to the Murdochians by selling his soul to the Hansonites ...

But back to the story at hand, with the reptiles determined to put on a cheerful face ...

You'd think the reptiles would be trying to ride the result home, because if it fails, it will be a gigantic fuck-up for Malware, with enormous consequences ...of the same kind as currently playing out in the United States. (Where once respectable folk would flee a Nazi flag, and anti-Semitic chanting and jackboots, now it seems you can stay respectable while joining a torch-light mob of fascists on parade).

But instead the reptiles stay on the path of keeping saucy doubts and fears alive, with the Terror in its usual state of hysterical anxiety ...

None are more expert at the saucy doubts and fears job than nattering "Ned",  while the lizard Oz is also busy ensuring fundamentalist Xians have a platform, and there were a couple of examples this day ...

First "Ned" ...

But there was something half-hearted about "Ned's" effort this day.

Perhaps the silly old bugger has spluttered himself out, perhaps he thinks he's on the losing side.

Who knows, but the result was tragically, comically short. Where "Ned" would usually produce an ocean of turgid words, this felt like a trip to the wading pool, with the water barely above the ankle ...

Tragic really, though "Ned" did his best to amplify the saucy doubts and fears of the tykes - what else could be expected of the Catholic Boys' Daily? - and with an  abundance of hand-wringing about how the sky might fall down, or at least result in the fall of western civilisation in much the same way as the Roman Empire collapsed - though a fair reading of Gibbon would suggest that was all the fault of the bloody Xians:

We shall conclude this chapter by a melancholy truth which obtrudes itself on the reluctant mind; that, even admitting, without hesitation or inquiry, all that history has recorded, or devotion has feigned, on the subject of martyrdoms, it must still be acknowledged that the Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels. During the ages of ignorance which followed the subversion of the Roman empire in the West, the bishops of the Imperial city extended their dominion over the laity as well as clergy of the Latin church. The fabric of superstition which they had erected, and which might long have defied the feeble efforts of reason, was at length assaulted by a crowd of daring fanatics, who, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, assumed the popular character of reformers. The church of Rome defended by violence the empire which she had acquired by fraud; a system of peace and benevolence was soon disgraced by the proscriptions, wars, massacres, and the institution of the holy office. And as the reformers were animated by the love of civil as well as of religious freedom, the Catholic princes connected their own interest with that of the clergy, and enforced by fire and the sword the terrors of spiritual censures. In the Netherlands alone more than one hundred thousand of the subjects of Charles V. are said to have suffered by the hand of the executioner; and this extraordinary number is attested by Grotius, a man of genius and learning, who preserved his moderation amidst the fury of contending sects, and who composed the annals of his own age and country at a time when the invention of printing had facilitated the means of intelligence and increased the danger of detection. If we are obliged to submit our belief to the authority of Grotius, it must be allowed that the number of Protestants who were executed in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries, and of the Roman empire. But if the improbability of the fact itself should prevail over the weight of evidence; if Grotius should be convicted of exaggerating the merit and sufferings of the reformers; we shall be naturally led to inquire what confidence can be placed in the doubtful and imperfect monuments of ancient credulity; what degree of credit can be assigned to a courtly bishop and a passionate declaimer, who, under the protection of Constantine, enjoyed the exclusive privilege of recording the persecutions inflicted on the Christians by the vanquished rivals or disregarded predecessors of their gracious sovereign. (here, with links for the whole thing).

Yes, once again, the pond has become bored and wandered off, but duty must be done, and so the pond returned to the fundamentalist plantation for a visit to the Catholic Boys' Daily by a Presbyterian.

The Terrorists might be worried that homophobia can't make it to the letter box, but never fear, it can always get a run in the lizard Ox ...

It seems the poor thing is crying out in pain, "will I have the right to remain a homophobe and a bigot?", and the pond is pleased to reassure him that there will be no difficulty.

The brightest legal minds have reassured us all that we have the right to be bigots ...so please, carry on ...

Now it took an enormous act of will (indeed a triumph of the Trumpian will) for the pond not to wander off down the young earth/creationist path that infests Presbyterianism, thanks to the likes of the hasty Pastie, his works here ...

Oh heck, one morsel from the creationists can't hurt, though the full insufferable degustation of bigotry can be found here ...

...the Gospel proclaims liberation from the bondage of sin, including homosexual sin, whereas the ‘liberals’ tell the homosexual that they cannot help it, and they can’t help them either, so they will accept them as they are! However, many a person has been gloriously rescued from the bondage of homosexual sin (and other sin) by the power of the Holy Spirit, but only Bible-believing Christians can offer such hope.

As with all moral issues, our beliefs about our origin determine our attitude. If we believe that we arose from slime by a combination of random chance events and the struggle for survival, it is understandable to say that there is no higher authority and we can make our own rules. However, if there is a loving God who planned us and gave commands for us to follow, then we must do so. God has set forth His standards in the Bible, beginning with the foundational teaching in the book of Genesis.

Elsewhere in the piece, there's a link urging death for homosexuals, perhaps by a jolly good stoning ...

It sets the mood for a last gobbet from Wilson ...

Yes, get out your stones for a jolly good stoning, or the next thing you know, no one will be able to talk about putting the wretches to death for their abominable abominations ...

Well as always, at this moment, the pond turns for light relief to the likes of Rowe, who in a scarifying image manages to say what it would take the pond or Gibbon or nattering "Ned", when he's feeling himself, some six volumes to say, with more pithy Rowe to hand here ... 

Talk about a ball, talk about a chain, talk about the baleful eye of bigots ...