Quebec will not allow public servants (including teachers, police officers, hospital workers, civil servants and judges among others) to wear religious symbols. Not all religious symbols are banned. Don’t be silly. But in the words of the Quebec minister of democratic institutions: “We’re talking about very obvious symbols … which send a clear message: ‘I am a believer and this is my religion.'”
Oh, only those.
According to Reuters, Reuters, the brilliant Bernard Drainville, the aforementioned Quebec minister of democratic institutions, said the reason for the law is that the state is neutral, so therefore those who work for it must be neutral too.
Is it possible the minister of democratic institutions doesn’t know what “neutral” means? As far as I can make out and hey, I’m no minister of democratic institutions but I’ll give it a go anyhow, the state is neutral on matters of religion and therefore the state must hunt down people who wear religious symbols and threaten them with a loss of their livelihood if they refuse to remove them? Yeah, that makes sense.
They do make it clear that if you want to wear a tiny religious symbol and hide it away so that either nobody can see it or understand from it that you’re a true believer that’d be fine, you know, kinda’ like those porn stars who wear tiny crosses on their necklaces while crawling into a pudding-filled kiddie pool with three men and a pet.
But you just can’t wear anything that says you’re some kind of oogedy-boogedy true believer type. That would be bad.
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