The Irish Catholic Bishops Conference doesn’t seem to have gotten the go easier on the gays memo from Pope Francis.

This week they released a hard hitting 16-page pastoral statement condemning gay marriage in advance of the referendum on the issue to be held there early next year.

The pamphlet, titled The Meaning of Marriage, will be distributed to more than 1,300 parishes across the country and it claims that the legalization of gay marriage would be a 'grave injustice.’

You read that right. Granting rights to gay people who are denied them would be a grave injustice to the heterosexuals who are not. 

Marriage rights for gay couples would undermine heterosexual marriage “as the fundamental building block of our society” the bishops wrote.

If the gays are allowed to marry Irish society will immediately collapse. For proof of this one only has to look next door to the UK, where cannibalism and human sacrifice commenced a moment after the Queen signed the gay marriage act into law on March 29.

Reproduction - the bishops pamphlet claims - is the “essential characteristic of marriage” and gay marriage “would deprive children of the right to a mother and father.”

If gays can get married then heterosexuals will stop having children, mothers and fathers will be forcibly separated and childless heterosexual couples will have their unions dissolved. 

But the horror doesn’t end there: re-education camps will be then set up to indoctrinate young people in pink triangle, beginning with classes teaching the proper dance steps to YMCA. Walking in six inch heels classes will be mandatory for all men and mechanical engineering courses will be mandatory for all women. Capital punishment will be reserved for citizens who refuse to appreciate Lady Gaga.

But perhaps the greatest irony of the Irish bishops statement this week is their claim that the meaning of marriage is that it promotes the wellbeing of children.

Think about that for a moment. As spokesmen for an institution that allegedly sold thousands of Irish babies to American adoptees, and that buried hundreds and perhaps thousands of children and infants in unmarked graves, looking the other way whilst countless clerical abusers and serial rapists attacked the defenseless without censure for decades - you have to admire their gall.

Now they are telling us to think of the children. Now. 

A poll conducted in April found that 67% of Irish respondents plan to vote yes in favor of marriage rights for gays. Presumably they have much longer memories than the bishops who still - after all we have learned - want to dictate to them who is deserving of love and who is not.