The vote to ban face coverings in public places with only one no vote, and it now goes to the Senate, where passage almost certain.

I have actually lived in a place where face coverings were briefly banned, I discovered this when we had issues with Halloween masks one year, for reasons completely unrelated to religious observance.

As I stated a few months ago, I have some mixed emotions here.

First, there is already an extant ban on masks in public, so the law, with its €150 fine for wearing the veil seems to be gilding the lily. Simply by enforcing the existing ban on masks in public places could achieve the same effect.

That being said, criminalizing coercion by family members to wear the garb, the law calls for €30,000 fine and up to a year in jail, does seem to be an unalloyed good.

Of course, you really don’t have good guys on either side.

On one side you have right wing nativists, and on the other side, you have a profoundly medieval mindset which sees the subjugation of women as a core value.^*

If there were only a way for both sides to lose this battle.

I don’t think that women should be wearing the burqa anywhere in the world, but I am still conflicted as to whether this needs to be put into law.

^*In the interest of fairness, I consider the Jewish Heredim, the ultra orthodox, to have a, “profoundly medieval mindset which sees the subjugation of women as a core value,” as well.