Slim majority support Kirby

Each Saturday the SMH letters editor has a go at summarizing the week's doings (see here, scroll down to the bottom.) From the summary:

The other big topic this week was the dust-up between Justice Michael Kirby and the Reverend Richard Lane, which provided about one in every four letters over the past two days, with a slim majority supporting Kirby.

That's interesting isn't it. The impression you would get from the way the SMH reports it is that basically, any right-thinking person will support the gay cause. But maybe the readers aren't as persuaded as the journalists about the way they should be thinking. Given that Kirby was essentially handed a free kick, and that the readership of the SMH tends left, this is a somewhat revealing straw in the wind.

Back when the Australia republic debate was being reported, you'd have thought that the republican cause was a lay down misere, if you only read the SMH. We're still a constitutional monarchy. This reminds me a bit of that, for the same reason—the tone is so biased that if you were not careful, you would be completely misled from the reality.