For one, the logic of going to a Cabane a Sucre and not eating pig, is like ordering a Cheeseburger, hold the cheese. Makes no sense!?! But that’s just me. So be it.

Secondly, religion as a whole is nutters and the demands of the religious should not be taken to seriously. As Pat Condell once noted, is god wanted women to cover their faces, he would have provided them with skin flaps. But again I could be biased by my atheism - though come on, GOD? Please.

The Shack may have said OK. According to the denouncer, the festivities had to stop for everyone, music and everything so that some people could stop and pray. Wait what? Take religion out of the equation. Take Accommodations out of the equation. Take the Bouchard-Taylor fiasco out of the equation. When a group of people in a free society wants to do something, they do it but they do not impose it on another group. That’s how freedom and cohabitation works. So when this group comes along and pushes the festivities asside to pray, they are imposing their will on others. That my friend is unethical and displays a lack of humility (Humility is a staple of all the desert religions). This goes in the same logic of “not playing your electric bass guitar at 10pm in an quadruplex” Both walk the line of freedom of expression and respect of others. The line that divides it is the answer to the question “Will I be selfish?” And a whole group can ask itself that question. That’s why I care. They could be any group of people of any ethnic background or religion, it doesn’t matter to me. What I can’t tolerate is having other’s will imposed on me and mines or another group. Personnaly I never would have dared asked anyone for anykind of special treatment so I could pray, meditate or whatever. I would have adapted my routine to the underlying circumstances.

It’s all good and wonderful to welcome diversity, I love it. But I won’t let tolerance render me passive either.

PS The article Failed to mention the Kirpan myth… or maybe that was a convenient omission on the journalist’s part?

I wouldn’t go to a Kosher restaurant and demand bacon or pork chops, would you? Because I’d respect that this is the menu they serve, that Jewish people don’t eat pork, tradition, etc.

All these incidents aside. It is impossible to accommodate for any religious kookery and shouldn’t be attempted. Give religion an inch, it’ll take a mile. Ask any old timer who remembers the pre-revolution-tranquille Catholic Theocracy Québec.

And with the new charter provision that puts freedom from gender discrimination above all other rights, wouldn’t asking to be strip-searched by someone of the same gender be illegal?

Men can’t always be trusted to be “gentlemen” with women. Fact of life. Women’s rights.

Religious accommodations in Quebec: That’s asking one culture to bend over and take it in the…. for the other culture. These aren’t rights but privileges. Oh I’m sorry but you will have to leave the Sugar Shack while these Muslims pray to Allah (in a restaurant that worships pig meat). And yeah, no ham, no bacon and no Christ’s ears. WHAT? I’d love to see the look on their faces if I walked into a mosque in some sandpit in the middle-east and I refused to remove my shoes or wash my feet and say I wanted to be accommodated because of my culture. Somehow I think I’d be accommodated with the edge of a blade to my neck.

I think the vast majority of people who come here understand this. But the vocal minority - and it’s always a minority with a capacity to yell long enough to achieve what they want who get what they want in the world - who ask for these insane privileges that go against everything a free society stands for are the ones giving a bad name to their community and makes the really red-necky side of Quebec’s culture - another minority - come out of the woodwork and everything’s gotten ugly.