Today is the March For Life, an annual event where hundreds of people describe themselves as tens of thousands and descend on downtown Ottawa to loudly protest abortion.
I should have realized it was today - my mind has been in such a fog that I've regularly lost track of the date and time. To compensate and clear my head I've been walking everywhere now. It was on my walk early this morning, halfway between my yuppie neighborhood and Parliament Hill that I noticed the path was unusually full of youths. They were all wearing matching fluorescent green and blue shirts with bearing some variation of "Respect for all lives!" and "Human Rights For Unborn Humans!" slogans.
The clothing looks like some vision of the future concocted in a 1990s daycamp but the underlying creepiness of eager teenagers, sober and smiling and talking about "youth group" was straight out of Pleasantville. For a moment I was gripped in panic. Jesus, where was I? When was I?
When it all came together I knew I was truly screwed. This thing is going to take up the whole day. All of the downtown core will be swarming with and decrepit old men in Knights of Columbus uniforms and church marms along with the scores of children they bus in to shore up the numbers and appear youthful.
We are be beset on all sides by the Faith Militant. Stick close and don’t trust anyone you wouldn't drink with in a strip club.
Over the years it has become clear that there are only two types of children attend the March for Life voluntarily: those who would step over their own grandmother for a day off of school on a sunny spring day, and tomorrow's League of Young Fascists. The former make a habit of disappearing into the crowds to visit the Rideau mall and likely can't name a single apostle, the later - those who don't end up running illegal daycares or militia groups - will eventually become United States Senators and run for President.
Both of those groups, along with those too young or mentally competent enough to object as their parents or teachers stick a "Praise Jesus My Mother Didn't Abort Me" sign in their hand and haul them down Elgin street in front of the national media, are here in droves. That's where the real horror show begins.
This isn't a rant about fetuses or conception. Opinions on what does or doesn't constitute a human being bore me...it's a designation I think should be denied to those who can't navigate a shopping cart around a grocery store. Besides, by and large that argument is over: the definition we have now seems to work well enough, satisfies our judiciary, and thus far hasn't been struck down by a bolt of lightning.
Oddly, this rant isn't even about Conservative MPs shouting about the Liberal Government of Death on the steps of Parliament - which, by happy coincidence, will spend today debating a bill on physician-assisted suicide! (Hah!)
No bub, this one is about how this town is flooded with the adults who describe themselves as protectors of all life from Womb-to-Tomb (except for "Godless atheists, queers, Hillary supporters, anyone who needs stem cell treatments, and whoever Jason Kenney tells us we need to bomb"), and take children out of publicly funded religious schools to use them as pawns for their own doomed attempt to govern the rest of us according to religious doctrine.
They accuse secularism or MTV or political correctness for brainwashing their children with wicked ways, but they're the ones goading them into shouting that their opponents are all baby murdering lesbians. This whole thing is exhausting.
