The “riddle” encompassed in the above headline is enigmatic … as well it should be.
It’s not a question I would have thought to ask if it weren’t for a tweet by Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA.
It’s hard to say what prompted the message at a time when the country is embroiled in its latest war of words, this one over the takeaway from last Sunday’s terrorist attack on a gay night club in Orlando. One common theme shared by both the liberal reaction to the massacre and Newkirk’s tweet was discrimination — in their case against the LGBT community, in hers… well — here’s the tweet:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
“Discrimination is discrimination, and it’s wrong, whether you’re a woman or a chicken,” – PETA President Ingrid Newkirk #StateOfWomen
— PETA (@peta) June 14, 2016
Like other fringe elements of the American progressive movement in the twenty-first century, the PETA crowd has always been something of the odd man out. Yes, the left would sooner save an animal’s life than a human fetus’s, but that arises out of a mutual, and perverse, disregard for human life.
This comes through in another of Newkirk’s tweets, mostly directed at scoffers who ridiculed her original message:
@b2american I’m sure the chickens living in constant fear & pain until they’re slaughtered at 6 months would have preferred not being born.
— PETA (@peta) June 14, 2016
Actually, PETA’s official stance on abortion, as Newkirk clarifies further on in the thread, is that they have none.
@b2american We have no official stance on abortion. https://t.co/pUqfD8HDb4
— PETA (@peta) June 14, 2016
To care at all about human life would evidently distract attention from PETA’s sole focus.
