Yahoo! News - French Lawmakers OK Religious Apparel Ban

Yahoo! News - French Lawmakers OK Religious Apparel Ban The law passed in the lower house of parliment 494-36. That's about a 93% majority in favor of the ban. It's cold water in the face of folks who think the french are americans with stinky cheese. This would be a preposterious law in the US, even in the post 9-11 house of mirrors we are still trying to escape. Obviously politics are large part of the law's existence. The performance of LePenn last time around has left a residue of nationalism that the big boys want to capitalize on. I have a hunch elections must be incoming. This kinda thing plays huge with those folks who value french purity. But is the law such a bad idea? I think I share some of the naive secular idealism that provides the ideological grounding of the law. Dressing children up in the symbols of our religions seems wrong. Most school children don't understand the full implications of the symbols they are wearing. What they do know is that these symbols seperate them from one another. The boys with yarmulke and the girls with burkahs know they aren't too cavort, I'd stake money on it. Children, like adults, are natually clique-ish, but they lack the perspective and possibly the prejudice of their parents. Remove the caps and shawls, and suddenly the children are laughing and running together. There is something I find appealing about the idea that we should strip our children of the symbologies that seperate us, and send them into school to play together-- and to learn about the ideas and histories that conspire to seperate them. Let them decide for themselves if provinciality, providence, and war are games they want to engage in for the rest of their lives.