First we have the wrecking balls like Cory Bernardi, whose contribution to the same-sex marriage debate is shock and outrage. But then there are those like Lyle Shelton, whose faux-rational and civil offensiveness attacks equality in a whole new way, writes Michael Bradley.

We're going to have a plebiscite that nobody wants.

The proponents of marriage equality rightly fear the awfulness the plan is already unleashing. And 76 per cent of Australians (according to Roy Morgan Research) don't want any kind of debate, they just think it should happen.

But I don't believe that anybody on the other side wants the plebiscite to actually go ahead either. Some Coalition MPs have declared they will vote against marriage equality regardless of the plebiscite's outcome. But most opponents are smarter than this and haven't fallen into the irony trap. They are maintaining public support for the plebiscite, and I reckon they're pursuing a rather more sophisticated strategy to derail it.

What they are playing for is time, nothing else. Every day of delay is a victory for them.

The plan has two parts and two sets of actors. At one end are the human wrecking balls like Cory Bernardi and George Christensen, whose job is to outrage. Whether it's Bernardi claiming that marriage equality could lead to the acceptance of bestiality, or Christensen comparing content on sites referenced in the Safe Schools program to "a paedophile grooming a victim", these guys know how to play up to their image as gay sex-obsessed arch-conservatives.

They are funny, in a Trump kind of way, but their strategy is as serious as his - outrage and distract. While we're busy being offended by their throwaway lines, we're not having a serious conversation about human rights.

The "reasonable" end of the anti-camp is exemplified by Lyle Shelton, the unruffled head of the Australian Christian Lobby. On Q&A this week, Shelton delivered a master class on the art of faux-rational distraction and civil offensiveness.

The battleground was well-set: Safe Schools and same-sex marriage had been lumped together on the agenda, which must have delighted Shelton. The audience was mostly liberal, judging from their noise, but included some serious looking people with questions of serious intent.

Take this question from Janet White to the panel:

In 2013 Julia Gillard delivered the national apology for forced adoption saying that (it) had broken the most primal and sacred bond there is between a mother and a baby. (With the plebiscite) we're being asked to establish another policy which breaks that bond. If we allow two men the right to marry, we deliberately establish motherless families in an ideal in our law. How can this policy be right when the last policy was wrong?

Janet delivered this savagely offensive blow with a straight and innocent face. She was merely asking a reasonable question about the (perhaps unintended) consequences of this potential change. Later, Shelton took over:

For two men or two women to found a family, that involves, quite often, and particularly if we start with this new policy of redefining marriage, it is not biologically possible for them to do that and that's not a statement of animus or prejudice against anyone. That's just a statement of biology. So we have to look then at areas of assisted reproductive technology, anonymous sperm donation potentially and then commercial surrogacy for men. Now, that involves taking a baby away from its mother, from the breast of its mother and giving it to two men.

In a few sentences, we are no longer talking about whether two people of the same sex should be allowed to get married. We've moved through forced adoption, IVF and sperm donation to commercial surrogacy. It's not that long a jump to bestiality after all, is it. Lyle is saying, look, I'm just giving you the facts. We need to talk about these things. Calmly.

Sorry, this video has expired Lyle Shelton, Dr Kerryn Phelps debate a question from a child of lesbian parents on Q&A ( Q&A )

Next up, audience member Georgia Weymouth-Large, the child of two lesbian mothers in a 32-year committed partnership expressed the fear that many people, gay and straight, are coming to recognise: "A public debate will give the religious right an excuse to attack and degrade our families." And later: "I am concerned that this debate will bring a lot of hate to my family. I don't want to see that."

Shelton in reply: "No, I don't want to either, Georgia. I don't want to see any hate come to you..."

Georgia: "What you're saying right now is quite offensive to me and my family. I mean, my parents are here and they're watching this."

The argument dragged on and Shelton would have been delighted by how it played out. The whole thing was focused on harm to children, the primal mother-child bond, a new stolen generation, and worse. What was most decidedly lost in the fury was the central question of why the hell are we arguing about this at all and whose business is it anyway?

As panellist Dr Kerryn Phelps almost shouted in exasperation at Shelton at one point: "I have three children and how they came about is none of your business, frankly." What she didn't get the chance to say is that she would just like to marry her long term partner and enjoy the same legal status and respect as straight people. She'd probably also like her children to enjoy the same status and respect as every other child.

The question that doesn't get asked and which Shelton and his ilk never address is: why? Why are you opposing this? Yes, you can come up with a thousand supposedly rational reasons why gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry but, given how often you seem to shift your rhetorical ground as each successive argument loses sway, that can't really be it. There's a reason you don't want gay people to get married, and it isn't scientific.

How does same-sex marriage affect anyone other than same-sex people? It doesn't. It simply doesn't. Those who oppose it do so for their own personal reasons, which really they should just keep to themselves. Their objections are as relevant and worthy of public debate as are the reasons for my ambivalence about Vegemite.

We should refuse to allow ourselves to be manipulated into arguing about irrelevancies. Instead we should respect Georgia and her mums, refuse to subject them to the hatefulness dressed up as concern which Shelton and co will take every opportunity to so smoothly roll out, and just get on with putting this inevitability to bed with a free vote of the Commonwealth Parliament.

Prime Minister: nobody, least of all you, wants a plebiscite. Do the adult thing and can it.

Michael Bradley is the managing partner of Sydney law firm Marque Lawyers, and he writes a weekly column for The Drum. He tweets at @marquelawyers.