Me, I found it long. Two years, before the opponents of the Law on the secularism of the State put a name, a face, a story on their arguments. It was written: as soon as a case was identified which it could make a famous cause, the empire of Canadian good-thinking would leap with all the vigor conferred by the complex of moral superiority which inhabits the Toronto scribes, the elected Liberals. and New Democrats and, now openly, Anglophone Conservative MPs. Their arguments are heavy. We must fight and eradicate this law, they say, because it contradicts the very heart of Canadian identity, because it calls into question decency, equality, inclusion. It stinks of racism and xenophobia. She is, to use the word of Minister Marc Miller, personal friend of Justin Trudeau: cowardly.
The time has come to respond without inhibition on the subject of the Quebec law. She is feminist, anti-discrimination and avant-garde. It is part of a centuries-old fight for enlightenment and against obscurantism. She is exemplary and courageous.
A feminist law. The major religions are all fundamentally misogynistic and opposed to equality between men and women. The Law on Secularism ensures that the State will henceforth refuse, for its employees in positions of authority, to endorse and normalize the symbols of these religions. While our public policies are engaged in a great effort of access to equality for women, in employment, in decision-making positions, in filing complaints against their aggressors, in promoting the taking of audacity and risk in business and politics, it is inadmissible that state agents wear symbols expressly intended to signal the modesty and submission of women.
Assuming proudly, by banning this misogynistic display, that the State condemns the concepts of modesty and submission for women is also a service to be rendered to all women in Quebec who are subject to a retrograde religious and family influence and who attempt to get out of it.
An anti-discrimination law. It is in two ways. First, it puts all convictions on an equal footing. Before her, it was forbidden for an employee in authority to display with buttons or clothing his political, social, even ecological convictions, therefore anchored in logic and science, but allowed to display his religious convictions, based on mythical stories and dogmas, the historical and scientific falsehood of which can easily be demonstrated. The Act puts an end to this unacceptable discrimination. Then, it establishes a tie in time for the religious display. Colossal social pressure led Quebec Catholic religious to no longer wear their cornets, their Roman collars and their ostentatious crosses in public service in the 1960s and 1970s. A more diversified immigration on the one hand and the rise of rigorous trends in the within Islam on the other hand have led to the reintroduction of religious displays in the Quebec state for 20 years. The law on secularism re-establishes equality before a single standard by applying, legally, to all what had hitherto been imposed, socially, only on Christians.
An avant-garde law. It is clear that the Quebec experience with regard to religion is unique in North America. Nowhere else have religious held back the development of a people. Prohibition of the opening of bookstores and blacklisting of new ideas, refusal to extend secondary education beyond their control (until 1964), discouragement of entrepreneurship, except in agriculture, diversion towards the most brilliant young clergy of each family, rather than towards science or industry, repeated calls for submission to the powerful, not to mention the sexual abuse perpetrated by part of the male and, we learn, female clergy, on Quebeckers and Aboriginals. More quickly and more firmly than in the rest of America, Quebecers individually and collectively declare an increasingly strong independence from religion. We see it in our more progressive and earlier positions on abortion, gay marriage, end of life and secularism, which form a continuum.
A courageous law. Canadian pollster Allan Gregg once explained to me that if you treat someone often enough, and publicly, a “pervert” just because they wear black shoes, they will eventually no longer wear them, even if the accusation is foolish. The flood of insults which fall on Quebec on the subject of secularism, as of the language or any affirmation of its identity, would have made bend many governments. So it took a real dose of courage, first in the Parti Québécois, then in the CAQ, to stand up in the storm. It is therefore, by far, the exact opposite of the cowardice of which Marc Miller speaks.
From Guy Rocher to Jolin-Barrette via Bernard Drainville, supporters of secularism have always shown more respect towards their opponents than they received in return. It is because we do not doubt their good faith and their conviction to be on the right side of history. Still. Whether they like it or not, they play into the hands of the misogynistic forces who want to display within the state itself symbols of the submission of women, they advocate discrimination that puts religious convictions, and therefore superstitions, above all other convictions, they protect minority religions, ostentatious, to the detriment of others, more respectful of civil rule, they turn their backs on the growing number of citizens who are moving away from religious myths and dogmas. Far from participating in enlightenment, equality, the primacy of science and reason, they hinder the march of progress.
It is high time to let them know.
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