[Another favorite Wanderer column.]
Of Canons and Culture…
20,000 Canadians Rally for Marriage
Pete Vere
About a month ago, I attended a rally for traditional marriage that was organized by occasional Catholic-Exchange contributor John Pacheco and FreeDominion.org. As one of the speakers reminded us, the date was April 9th – exactly one week after the death of Pope John Paul the Great. It seemed a little strange hearing the speaker refer to John Paul II as “the Great” so soon after his death. Whereas I personally have no problem with this papal honorific, the speaker was a Protestant minister and a staunch Calvinist. Perhaps the Holy Spirit was telling us that John Paul II is predestined to be remembered as the Great.
As the crowd grew, John assigned me to patrol the security zone separating the Muslims from the homosexual counter-protesters. One could distinguish the latter by their rainbow dyed hair (how cliche), their multiple body piercings (it helps them jingle to Kumbya), and their Betty Davis eyes (but without the makeup).
Since some will accuse me of stereotyping, I will also mention the cleric from some unknown sect. Predictably, he came vested in a pink and purple stole. I also witnessed two portly men of which one appeared to be in his late forties and the other in his early sixties. They wore scruffy beards, bright coloured shirts and tight sweat pants. I would have preferred to keep my eyes to myself, but the odd couple insisted upon locking themselves arm-in-arm and skipping through my security zone. I gained a new respect for the Hijab as a Muslim mother pulled her children into her veil and covered their eyes.
If you believe the police and the more moderately leftist media, the counter-protesters numbered about three hundred. Yet the rest of the mainstream leftist media numbered the counter-protesters at around a thousand. The discrepancy comes as no surprise for those who follow the culture war. After all, sex education now takes precedence over mathematics in our public school system. Of course none of the mainstream media mentioned the pasty white complexion of each and every counter-protester.
As one who supports God’s definition of marriage, I stood amidst a multi-ethnic and multi-racial sea of Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelical Protestants, Chinese Christians, Native Aboriginals, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other people. We felt the great pull of multiculturalism as we united in defence of marriage. We were even joined by a group of homosexuals who are sick of their more radical cohorts constantly antagonizing the general public. In contrast to the diversity exemplified within our movement to protect the natural definition of marriage, the pro-homosexual “marriage” counter-protesters struck me as distinctly caucasian.
Unenlightened as we multi-ethnic and multi-religious neanderthals are, the police estimated our numbers on Parliament Hill at between fifteen-and-twenty thousand strong. Various subsequent protests in other major Canadian cities are also drawing in the thousands. This is unusual for our apolitical country. The government can no longer pacify the average Canadian citizen with hockey, socialized healthcare and donuts.
As a consequence of so-called “same-sex marriage” and several multi-million dollar corruption scandals, Canadians are now standing up to politicians. The latest scandal may still bring down the governing Liberals before they can force sodomite marriage upon our country. We are also standing to defend marriage from the robed masters of Canada’s judiciary. This is the same arrogant group that currently threatens Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary. The bishop’s crimes have nothing to do with minors and illicit sex, at least not in the Catholic sense. His Excellency is being persecuted for his audacity to proclaim to Catholic youth that homosexual sex in sinful. Catholic teaching now constitutes “hate speech” in Canada.
Finally, we are sending a message to the Canadian mainstream media. The majority of Canadians believe in the sanctity of marriage. We will no longer listen to the CBC’s twaddle undermining the institution of marriage. Nor will we fear the Canadian mainstream media’s attempts to brand us as bigots. For my American readership, the CBC stands for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It ought to stand for Communists Belittling Christians. The CBC allows the government to funnel our tax dollars to otherwise unemployable leftist without calling it welfare.
I happened to have my own run-in with a CBC reporter at the march. If his purple-striped pink tie did not betray his bias, I found it suspicious that he only interviewed white elderly people of a liminal fundamentalist Protestant variety. Of course the reporter denied any bias when I confronted him. Nevertheless, neither he nor his camera man could explain why they had only interviewed white people. After all, the majority of Canadians who came to Parliament Hill in support of traditional marriage were not of caucasian origin.
Yet the reporter refused to acknowledge his bias. “You should watch the segment before you judge the CBC,” he said between clenched teeth.
“No thanks,” I replied. “Thanks to Fox News, I no longer have to settle for the CBC.”
I barely suppressed a smile as the reporter’s complexion turned the same shade of purple as the stripes on his tie. Coincidentally, one of my friends subsequently emailed me this reporter’s segment as it appeared on the evening news. I noticed that the reporter had edited the segment, peppering it with interviews from various ethnic communities. He even appeared to quote these folks in context, which allowed them to sound like normal human beings.
This is the first example of unbiased reporting I have seen from the CBC on this issue. But if the Church can elect Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, perhaps my fellow Canadians can reach the tipping point in the culture war.