fear and loathing

God, Angela Shanahan irritates me. Here she is, keen to reassure conservative Australians that there is no need to fear "Lesbians going nuclear":

"...the prize for the weirdest reaction was the SMH which apparently saw lesbians at the vanguard of the new nuclear family announcing "Lesbians Go Nuclear!" Sounds alarming. Of course we are used to hearing about this inevitable decline of the family so we are only too willing to accept this gloomy scenario. But is it true?

Right. It's "gloomy" and "alarming" to think lesbians fall in love and want to make formal commitments and raise children together just like heterosexuals. Shanahan goes on to explain that there's no need to worry, because:

As for the gay family. Well, they are almost non-existent. They are mostly lesbians with children from former marriages. They constitute about a quarter of a per cent of couples with children.

Phew, eh! Shanahan acts as if marriage is a finite quantity and there's only so much to go around. If gays start helping themselves to happy family lives and the rituals that go with it, there'll be less for the heterosexuals. Or something. Never can quite figure out why lesbians "going nuclear" would be a threat to anyone.
But here's something there is a finite quantity of: the natural resources on our planet. Yeah, and there's only a finite quantity of our tax dollar, in the form of family tax benefits available to all parents and in all likelihood claimed by the Shanahan family too. So if I were Angela Shanahan, I would stop bragging about having nine kids myself. After all it's just genetic selfishness. And possibly overkill.