The Premier's gay gaffe last week wasn't actually a gaffe at all, but rather an indication of the ridiculous minefield we've made of politics. Keneally clearly intended her ''saints and sinners'' comment to express tolerance, not diss gays. Seeing it the latter way continues the relentless drearification of politics.

But Keneally's spirited defence of her remarks reveals a deeper, stranger irony. "Where in the gospel," she asked, "do they talk about same sex relations?" Plus, she added, "there are parts of the Bible that prohibit usury - making interest on money."

Now I'd be the last to suggest a reintroduction of church into state. But it's curious that while our hapless addiction to usury has us demanding more debt even as it brings us to our knees, it's homosexuality - ''same sex relations'' is the politician's euphemism - that cops a bucketing from the church.

Homosexuality may be both legal and productive (mardi gras alone generates an estimated $38 million for Sydney) but still Pope Benedict makes it the moral equivalent of razing the rainforests. Brisbane priest Peter Kennedy is sacked for offering a gay-friendly liturgy and Fred Nile denounces "the indecent homosexual mardi gras" as obvious child porn territory.

And sure, there's history here. Dante's Divine Comedy puts both sodomites and usurers in the inner ring of the seventh circle of hell, below suicides (but above, incidentally, politicians), in a flaming desert pelted by flakes of fire. (I like the idea of hell's inner rings, which I picture as super-heated inner-tubes in a way that resonates with my childhood hunches about the role of Vulcan in patching bike punctures. Hell, like politics, was so much more interesting for Dante; these days you'd be lucky to incur six weeks with a broken telly.)