Under normal circumstances, if you managed to unite the Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities behind a common cause, you’d be a shoe-in for the next Nobel Peace Prize. Unless, of course, you manage to unite them to picket your lawn. Bonus points for also managing to have the Christians sniping at you from across the street.

And this is exactly what happened in Quebec: the minority government run by the secular Parti Québécois (PQ) seems so accustomed to being the minority that they never realized that the minorities they antagonized Find phone , taken together, make up the majority of voters. And antagonize them they did.

As reported by Time, their proposed ‘Charter of Values’ contains language that would disallow too obvious religious symbols or garments to be worn by

“government workers and employees of institutions that receive public funds—from judges, school teachers and police officers to doctors and daycare staffers. A cartoonish graphic released last week illustrates the types of symbols that would be banned to them (Muslim head coverings of all kinds, skull caps, turbans and especially large crucifixes[…]). And the plan would also require all members of the public to uncover their faces when giving or receiving a state service, like applying for a driver’s license.”

To be clear about this: I think the underlying idea is ethically sound. It’s just that PQ handled this issue with all the grace, elegance and subtlety of a stampeding herd of elephants. It seems that, as a primarily secular party, the PQ strategists thought that the politically correct way to get rid of a real problem (burkas and head veils) was a shotgun approach: To evenly spread restrictions over all major beliefs. They probably thought that if everyone had to give a little, they’d be more likely to agree. It never occurred to them that everyone just might agree to give you the finger.

All this just goes to show that religious people don’t have a monopoly on doing something silly. PQ has shown that seculars can be just as monumentally stupid as the rest.

Well, at least we have something that unites us all.