In which the pond offers all the fun of the fair, including a chance to enjoy the nattering of "Ned" and Miranda the Devine at the coconut shy ...

This day the pond was compelled to producer a bumper book for boys and girls, because when nattering "Ned" gets going, there's a story as long as the collected works of Kipling ... though with the bonus of tedious "Ned's" patented capacity for silliness ...

Look at the splash for starters. There's the blatherer nattering about intolerant and irrational campaigners, while in the piece below, he'll get busy lavishly quoting delusional fools who believe a wafer is full of godly human flesh and blood, and who consign anyone who disagrees with them to an eternity of hellfire.

And in keeping with that sort of arrogance, nattering "Ned" arrogantly demands that things "must" happen ...

A debate must produce a bill?

About the only thing a debate is going to produce is the hot air and blather of a nattering "Ned", wringing hands and carrying on like a pork chop. It's the business of politicians to produce bills, but thanks to the onion muncher, the hard right and the supine, spineless Malware, that responsibility has been swept aside so we can get on with a useless, very expensive survey and "Ned's" blather fest ...

Such a pompous, tedious bore ... and such a desperate attempt at a red herring, the campaign already well down the track, and distractions and outraged demands all the go.

The pond immediately felt the need for a cartoon ...

More David here, as nattering "Ned" broods at the way his red herring is likely to be ignored. It's just so unfair, and won't someone listen to the Catholics ...

The moment that "Ned" mentioned intellectual fraud, the pond knew that he'd nailed it, on the basis that it takes a pious fraud of the "Ned" kind to spot a richly misleading fraud ...

Speaking of the Catholics, Mark Coleridge, a most preeminent homophobe and bigot, made an excellent contribution to the debate, as noted by the reptiles ...

 

Yep, incest got a go as an argument, with the ABC also writing it up here ...

Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge said those participating in the same-sex marriage postal survey should consider that same-sex couples were different. "That love is like the love of friends," he said. "It is love and it is valuable but it's not and it can't be the kind of love that we call marriage." Archbishop Coleridge said there had always been discrimination towards some forms of marriage.
"Sibling marrying sibling has always been ruled out.
"People underage have been disqualified from marrying but so too people of the same sex."
Archbishop Coleridge said he was not speaking simply from a religious point of view and said language had become "slippery" in the same-sex marriage debate. "I am concerned to clarify the language and I don't think it's enough to say that 'love is love'," he said. "There's only one form of love, the many forms of love that we call marriage and that is between a man and a woman, supposedly lifelong and supposedly open to children." Archbishop Coleridge said while it was his responsibility to equip fellow Catholics with knowledge about the debate, he did not want to give a "hard time" to people in same-sex unions. 
"Their dignity has to be respected at every turn," he said.

Their love is different?

Dragging incest into the discussion is respecting their dignity at every turn? Phew, the pond urgently felt the need of a cartoon ...

If only they were into head-butting each other, but instead the pond has to endure a last bump from nattering "Ned" still doing his best for deeply entrenched Catholic bigotry...

What a fine and well-cooked red herring nattering "Ned" served up ...

But the pond has barely begun ... and so must now trudge over to indulge in a serving of fresh 

Samut ...

Now here the pond must confess to an extreme prejudice.

The moment, the nanosecond, it reads any sentence containing the trendoid word of the moment, "virtue-signalling", it wants to run screaming from the room.

It's the surest sign that the pond has landed in the company of a group think twit.

It even has its own wiki entry here, which suggests it first came out back in February 2009, but now like the Crown of Thorns starfish it's in plague proportions amongst bears of little brain ...

Virtue signalling is the conspicuous expression of moral values done primarily with the intent of enhancing standing within a social group. The term was first used on the blog LessWrong in February 2009, and then incorporated in 2010 within the framework of signalling theory to describe any behavior that could be used to signal virtue—especially piety among the religious. Since 2015, the term has become more commonly used as a pejorative characterization by commentators to criticize what they regard as the platitudinous, empty, or superficial support of certain political views, and also used within groups to criticize their own members for valuing outward appearance over substantive action. This more recent usage of the term has been criticized for misusing the concept of signalling and encouraging lazy thinking.

Put it another way. There's always chattering parrots and braying donkeys to hand eager to embrace a cliché, even relatively newly minted ones ... and where the pond finds 'virtue-signalling', 'identity politics' is sure to follow ...

In time of course this sort of talk will run its course and people will look back and wonder what the fuck they were on and what the fuck they were talking about.

Like that talk of "secular sin," a spectacular bit of silliness, and like Sammut yearning for the good old days of sexism, racism and homophobia...

At this point, some might wonder who Sammut is, and what organisation he works for, and who funds said organisation.

Sadly the pond can confirm that while Sammut works for CIS, and purports to be a healthcare policy wonk - perhaps excluding secular sinners, who deserve to keep suffering from boils - who knows who funds it, and him ...

Media Watch here, back in 2013, and nowto the second thing that's inclined to make the pond scream.

Always there's a litany, and in that litany, always there's a mention of Coopers and safe schools, repeated over and over like a kyrie eleison, because that's what bears with little brain do when they get down to their chanting ...

And that's how it goes in the topsy turvy world of CIS. The Donald, Brexit and One Nation are all the fault of pesky liberals and somehow this can be linked to upholding the Enlightenment tradition of rational inquiry and debate.

Well that's the pond's dose of fuckwitted philosophising for the day, and perhaps the week, because it's time to round things out with the final coconut in the shy ...

Yes, modest trumpet and cries of "true Enlightenment traditions like the Inquisition" if you will maestro ...

Now it's likely even the most hardened devotees of the reptiles will have wilted by now. The pond suggests splashing on some essence of Devine ...

Skin cleansed, as if caressed by acid, it's time to plunge on, bright eyed and bushy tailed ...which is just as well because the Devine has a horror story to shock the ages ...

Yes, she's discovered some squatters in Petersham, and as Marlon himself might say, oh the horror, the horror ...

Fresh eggs in a fridge?

Now there's luxury. Why in the pond's day, people were grateful for a hundred year egg, and if that resulted in a little queasiness, why all the better as training for reading the Devine ... 

Now back to the terrifying, horrifying story unfolding in a suburb just a few streets away from a shocked, startled, fearful pond ...

Oh it's frightening, no doubt about it, the debate has been hijacked and god-fearing poofter haters have been silenced in a shameful way. Why you wouldn't have the first clue there was anyone promoting the 'no' cause ... (with more Wilcox here and more Rowe here).

Never mind, only two more Devine gobbets to go, but a warning, the next gobbet features shocking (in the original moving) footage of two women kissing ... just part of the horrifying, terrifying, frightening, shocking, shameful tale of woe ...

To be fair, the Devine is really the most resolute, stern, homophobic bigot of them all. 

She's an astonishing culture warrior, acidic to her bilious core, a take no prisoners haranguing harridan, resorting to every cheap rhetorical trick and spurious argument in a hate fest which naturally finds a home for conflating gay symbols with a petrol-bombing anarchist and a cop car in flames ...

It makes that hapless Queensland Catholic archbishop seem like a rank amateur, as he trots out talk about the way that you can't do incest, so you certainly can't do poofter ... with the greatest respect.

The Devine doesn't bother with respect, she just delivers pure essence of petrol-bombing hate ...

Can anyone remember back through this dross to the original shocking squatters politely getting up and leaving, with fresh eggs left in the fridge?

Well here you are now ... from fresh eggs to petrol bombs in the world of the malign Devine ...berating corporations for not indulging in poofter bashing ... as she and other fundamentalist Catholics, not to mention Daesh, want to keep indulging in ...

The dark side of the rainbow?

There's your paranoid delusional ratbaggery right there, in a coconut shell, with the sublime incapacity to understand that there's a deeply dark side, and a century egg stench, to the Devine ...

Well that's more than enough, apart from a couple of cartoons, with more Tandberg here, and Pryor now resident here ... 

Anyone who's made it this far might feel in need of a shower to remove that essence of Devine, but keep an eye out for the fly-plagued squire tending to the needs of the brave knights ...