Go home Quebec, you're drunk

[sabotabby]

It's a sad and strange day when I agree with anything that comes out of Jason Kenney's mouth, but broken clocks, twice a day, etc. Quebec's proposed charter of values that will ban public servants from wearing any religious symbol (but really we mean Muslim religious symbols) is so completely batshit insane that I'm amazed it got this far.

I wonder what even constitutes a religious symbol. I mean, I used to wear ankhs and pentacles and inverted crosses, not out of any religious conviction but because I was Goth As Fuck. In Montreal, would a Habs jersey count? I mean, it's really unclear. Also racist. And loopy.

There is a certain type of New Atheism that's essentially a continuation of White Man's Burden by other means. This is its exemplar.

Comments

[outcastspice.livejournal.com]

Yeah. This is why my parents left Quebec in the 70's, it's not new. Though perhaps it's getting worse.

[sabotabby]

That's essentially why my mum left as well. That and family issues. But she hates it and can't understand why I love Montreal so much.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

I'm always super-curious of hearing the stories of those who left Montréal. Not being from there myself, it's like they lived on a different planet...

[sabotabby]

She has lots of stories, and my grandparents had even more. They were definitely discriminated against; whether it was Actual Racism or not is debatable. Regardless, 'twas not a pleasant place to be for minorities back in the day.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

It's not getting worse. Québec is becoming more multicultural by the day; and by that I don't just mean that there are more immigrants, but that settlers have more and more understanding of multiculturalism. What's happening is that the increasing diversity of Montréal happened under the radar of the rest of the province for a while, and then when they woke up during the last decade, esp. with the spectacle of American invasion of Iraq/Afghanistan and ensuing islamophobia, and rising islamophobia in France, some people decided this would work well here. The media built a frenzy out of nothing (that was the conclusion of the Taylor-Bouchard report; they further said that people made "accomodations raisonables" everywhere, every day, but that didn't make the media headlines) but a lot of sheltered people out of Montréal ate it up and almost elected the right-wing Action Démocratique party on a "Québec Identity" plank that the PQ had always owned. The PQ has always built its victories with the Out of Montréal electorate (with some east-end ridings, of course), and it wowed never to let the ADQ get away with that again. What the politics and the media blow out of proportion is not the image of what happens on the ground. Now you have everyone in Montréal up in arms about it, and even the Bloc Québécois is against it, although less strenuously than the other federal parties. The tricky part is that the anti-clerical movement in Québec was much stronger than the rest of the Western Hemisphere during the last generation, and the PQ is feeding on the echoes of this movement, which still has resonance in living memory here. Of course the real story is that if the anglos had tried to rid US of our church, we would have clung to it like there no tomorrow. It's not up to the majority to meddle in minorities' religious beliefs, but for minorities to figure it out by themselves.

As for that crucifix in the National Assembly in Québec City, it was put up there in 1939 by a Union Nationale motion, to spite to the progressives criticising how close the UN was to the church at the time. (Progressives that would be apoplectic to see this proposal today.) Pretty ironic that now the government wants to cling to its National Crucifix as a symbol of our history!!