George (Pell-Pot) Pell's Wacky Ideas on Marriage:
As soon as I saw that Pell had written an article against gay marriage in today's The Australian, I knew I was in for some fun. Ignoring the scary fact that he actually has quite a lot of power and clout, it's just laughable how bad his argument against gay-marriage is – it just does not make sense! I for the life of me don't understand the basic platform of his argumment - I don't get why same-sex marriage would "whittle away" the rights of heterosexual couples? Basic rights are not a finite resource. If you give them to someone else, you don't have to then deny them to others. According to Pell, "promoting so-called gay marriage through legal endorsement by the state would weaken significantly the place of traditional marriage and bring with it instability and futher confusion". Confusion - who is confused here? Will gay marriage confuse straight couples? It seems quite clear-cut to me, but then, I'm not totally insane. Other stupid arguments include:

"Same-sex marriage would erode traditional marriage as the norm for most men and women"
"Marriage is in decline" – which means that we should deny it to those who want it…
"[Marriage] provides a significantly lower danger of child abuse and murder"
"[Marriage]… provides lower rates of injury"
"It is not discrimination to say that same-sex marriage takes us in the wrong direction"

(ooh, Elanor's got there before me!)