Lessons from France

Editorial

Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister of multiculturalism, is being condemned for allegedly editing out of Canada’s new citizenship study guide references to homosexuality, equal marriage and explicit protections of sexual orientation in human rights legislation.

The updated guide – which prospective citizens study diligently before undertaking a written exam – included, in earlier drafts, the breaking news that homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969, that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and that same-sex marriage was legalized in 2005. Evidence retrieved by the Globe and Mail through Freedom of Information requests suggests that the gay material was deleted at the request of the minister’s office. Civil servants evidently urged the minister’s office to reinstate the content, but were overruled. The new 63-page guide, released in November, doesn’t mention gay and lesbian rights at all.

The issue is relevant, in part, because the new citizenship guide will prove crucial in fashioning the future of this country. There are few formal ways in which new Canadians ascertain the values of their selected society. The citizenship guide provides the rules of the road to citizenship.

There is a Canadian consensus that gays and lesbians will enjoy rights no different from those of all Canadians. This is historic in the context of world affairs, where Canada and a half-dozen other countries are at the cutting edge of this issue. To black out this truth is to diminish this country’s human rights achievements and, indeed, to put those achievements at risk. The consequence of failing to sustain and instil among newcomers the core values of a tolerant society is evident in a cautionary story we see unfolding in France.

Last week, the story emerged of a French schoolteacher being sprayed with tear gas by a student after she referred to al-Qaeda as “terrorists.” It is already known that many French teachers will simply not address various historical realities, such as the Holocaust, because any narrative that could inspire empathy with Jews could invite physical repercussions to teachers. The threats, to state the obvious, often come from children who are products of foreign school systems and societies that deliberately nurture Jew-hatred and jihad.

The threats represented by a proportion of the French immigrant population that has not been successfully integrated into pluralist France are mirrored by another threat: the backlash to this reality among nationalist extremists.

The results of the French regional elections – round one took place last Sunday; the round two runoff is this Sunday – demonstrate, in part, what can happen when a society faces this sort of internal conflict. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right coalition was trounced in every region by the socialist opposition. Some observers are already saying that Sarkozy’s hope of winning a second term in the 2012 presidential elections is doomed by these results.

Perhaps the more notable result, though, is at the other end of the tally. The far-right Front National won about 12 percent and will move to round two in half the regions, taking votes that might otherwise return to the mainstream conservatives.

This represents a sharp resurgence for the far right. In European elections last year, the extremist group led by the geriatric neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen won 6.8 percent of the French votes. In the 2007 French presidential election, Le Pen took just 4.3 percent, a serious fall after the previous election, in which Le Pen outpolled the socialist candidate in the first round to go head-to-head with Jacques Chirac in the final round.

Some critics are already saying Sarkozy’s efforts to undercut support for the far right actually aided Le Pen. The thinking goes that Sarkozy, by emphasizing issues like immigration and the wearing of the Islamic veil (with the perceived threat to French secularism this symbolizes), actually sent French voters whose fears were stoked by Sarkozy’s campaigning into the arms of Le Pen. As it turned out, voters who responded to Sarkozy’s “veiled” fear tactics opted for the candidate whose hatred of Muslims was not veiled at all. More than one in 10 French voters cast a ballot for the party that produced campaign posters depicting a woman with a burqa and the words “No to Islamism” and one with an Algerian flag over a map of France featuring minarets as missiles.

Once a tolerant, pluralist society loses control of its national narrative, it is difficult to regain it. Kenney may not relish gay marriage, but its inclusion in our citizenship guide represents something more than the issue of gay rights itself. It tells potential citizens that this is a society where we demonstrate respect to everyone, regardless of what prejudices and mythologies may have been instilled in one’s country of origin.

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