They only took down the cross in the National Assembly after backlash and calls of hypocrisy. Originally Legault wanted it to stay up. That alone says to me how BS the whole thing is.
But that stuff really is "history and culture" rather than "public endorsement of religion."
People in my home country would never tolerate foreign Christians coming in and demanding that the state stop celebrating Eid or changing place names. People are entitled to their heritage, and shouldn’t have to erase it to accommodate newcomers.
We had a Christmas tree every year growing up in America as immigrants from a Muslim country. When I visit Tokyo in December, which is in a non-Christian country, there are Christmas trees in all the malls. Christmas trees are the archetypal examples of religious symbols that have turned into cultural symbols.
> there is also "history and culture" in Confederate monuments and places named after them.
Please, lean into this.
The use of saint names is unavoidable, a reminder of how the Church used to control everything. It would be a powerful statement of actual secularism if some schools were renamed, even some streets. But most people don't care, they just stopped going to mass and kicked the priests out of schools, job done. Secularism is now code for xenophobia.