Québec is at it again, viciously suppressing its minorities. From the proposed Charter of Provincial Values:
- Public employees, including civil servants, judges, police, doctors, nurses and teachers, would be forbidden from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols such as the Jewish kippa, the Muslim hijab and the Sikh turban.
- Women and girls would have to remove their veils in order to attend public schools or receive health care.
- The “charter of values” would also apply to the private sector. It would amend the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms to include the principles of equality of women with men, the religious neutrality of the state and the secular character of public institutions.
However, the large cross in the provincial parliament (see above), and crosses generally, will be allowed—as personal adornment, on nuns' habits, and on the tops of churches.
Don Macpherson of the Montreal Gazette calls the proposed Charter "sinister, ridiculous, and pathetic." Inasmuch as 'ridiculous and pathetic' evoke the clownface rather than the jackboot, I would say that he is mincing words. But he shrewdly pokes fun at the ritualistic evocation of women's equality to paper over the unabashed oppression of minorities, noting that gender equality is already protected in Québec's Charter of Rights—three times. It gives 'lipstick on a pig' a whole new meaning.
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