It happened in a public, French-speaking high school in the Côte-des-Neiges district of Montreal. While consulting the responses given to an online questionnaire sent to his students, teacher Francis Richer, who is gay and proud to be so, read the following: “Long live the genocides against the lgbtq”, “Francis the gay is going to die”, “Francis is not a good teacher, he assaulted me in bed”. These anonymous responses came from 10 of his 75 students from 2e secondary, aged 13-14.
Richer had been warned that some of the parents were very reactive and that he would be wise to be careful about what he said. After the incident, which he reported to management and the police, he was advised to stop admitting that he was gay when asked. It was the old policy of the American military: don’t ask, don’t tell “The problem is that students are still asking the question, and Francis Richer believed that Quebec society had evolved enough for him to be able to show himself without provoking a wave of intolerance.
“Usually, with the way I speak and how I move, it happens more quickly. I can hide that I am a sovereignist, but not that I am homosexual,” he confided to Mylène Moisan, of Sun and the Information Coops, which brought this affair to light last Tuesday.
Richer was right. Quebec society had evolved. But now it is going backwards. Richer’s case “is the tip of the iceberg,” says the Duty Raphaël Provost, CEO of the Ensemble pour le respect de la diversité group, whose school programs reach 30,000 students per year. “Gay teachers who are afraid to come out, Francis is not the only one. We see it every week in the comments we receive from students.” If we compare it to the situation five, ten or fifteen years ago, “there is a return. It was much more viable, we were much more – I wouldn’t say tolerant – but indifferent towards LGBTQ teachers.” Anti-gay speech is now uninhibited.
When we want to examine the source of this homophobic and sometimes misogynistic resurgence, everyone is walking on eggshells. Speaking to Patrick Lagacé on 98.5, Professor Richer admitted that, since his classes are overwhelmingly made up of young people from immigrant backgrounds, this could have played a role.
So, we take big detours. The causes are multiple. There are Tremblay and Béliveau boys who are followers of Andrew Tate and other misogynistic influencers. That’s for sure. Others come from evangelical families and say that Jesus is against homosexuality. Absolutely. And then there are all these Muslims of origin who are perfectly integrated and who swear only by openness to others and to Quebec values. Of course, I know some.
But when we dare to ask the awkward question: is not the increase in our classes of children from families where a culture of patriarchy and a rejection of homosexuality reigns, as is the case in some practicing Muslim families, a significant factor? – we come across the stares of moose paralyzed by the headlights of a car.
“There is a correlation,” admits Raphaël Provost, when pushed to his limits. “If in their family and their own culture, if on their side, it is still in their head and in their spirit, that it is criminal, that it is forbidden or that it does not exist, or that it is sometimes the first time that they hear about it…” But, but, but, let’s not generalize.
Very well, let’s not generalize, but let’s not blind ourselves.
Pollsters have been telling us for decades: even compared to English Canadians, Quebecers are more tolerant on issues of personal choice, sexual orientation, permissiveness toward adolescents. How can we think that significant immigration from countries where the local culture is immensely less tolerant, and based on religious dogma, could fit into our vision of things without us feeling concrete effects?
There is family, there is peer pressure. Nothing is stronger in the formation of values in adolescence than peer pressure. How can we think that a class formed by a high proportion of children from families where patriarchal notions prevail will be magically enchanted to adopt the values of pre-teens from families who have, for 25 years, practiced tolerance and openness?
We must recall the figures from the latest Sociocultural Portrait of Students Enrolled in Public Schools on the Island of Montreal to measure the scale of the challenge: 56% of all students were either born abroad or born here to two foreign parents. In 38% of public schools, whether primary or secondary, more than two-thirds of students are in these categories; 25% have 75% or more; 10% have 85% or more.
Of course, many of these foreign parents come from countries where tolerance toward women and homosexuals is equivalent to ours. From 2019 to 2023, 14% of new arrivals came from France, 19% from Arab countries — 12% of students in Montreal have Arabic as their mother tongue. And among the new Quebecers who came from the Maghreb or Iran, many chose us precisely to find a freer society here.
This column will earn me the usual insults, but the truth has its rights. Having a large Ukrainian community in one’s population weighs in the public debate on our position towards Ukraine. Having a large Jewish community in our population weighs in the public debate on our position towards Israel. Having a large Muslim community in our population has consequences on the public debate on the Palestinian issue, yes, and on the values propagated, within this community, by active promoters, notably and not only online, of homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitism.
This current, real, is added to the others. The patriarchal Muslim speech is disinhibited by the dissemination of misogynistic remarks from the supporters of Andrew Tate and the evangelists, and vice versa. We are therefore in the presence of a cocktail of intolerance that mixes and strengthens before our eyes, in our schools. I would like to be able to tell you how to reverse the trend. For the moment I only know one thing: refusing to name your sources is prohibiting yourself from acting.