Veiled Equality and Secularism.

The New York Times recently described the newest developments in France to enact a prohibition on the wearing of the face veil. Some of the opposition of course came from religious groups. Meanwhile, as Miguel Schor has pointed out in a recent blog posting here, Argentina has essentially allowed same-sex marriage. Again, religious groups led the opposition. These are both victories for some notion of secularism, in the views of many. Yet it’s intriguing to think of the very different concepts of equality implicated by this secularism. In Argentina, one sees an equality as diversity approach. In France, one sees equality as a kind of homogeneity. These different notions of equality have been discussed by many scholars, but it is intriguing to see the divide in practice at the same time.