Political Correctness Running Amok in France

Comedians say gag is no laughing matter

From Charles Bremner in Paris

---snip

FRENCH comedians, worried that they might be out of a job, sided with freedom-of-speech advocates yesterday after Parliament passed a law that makes it an imprisonable offence to insult homosexuals and women.

Jokes about blondes, La Cage aux Folles — the hit show and film about camp gays — and even the Old Testament could be banned under the law, suggested critics who said that political correctness was running riot in France.

“We are plunging ever more into le politiquement correct,” Laurent Ruquier, a star television comedian, said, using an expression imported in the 1990s from America. “You are not allowed to mention anything or anyone,” Ruquier said, noting that he is himself gay.

The unease is being felt on both the Right and the Left as France follows the US and Britain down the path of trying to stamp out the potential for causing offence to minorities of any kind.

...

Homosexual and feminist groups welcomed the law, which the Government [my note: Chirac's group] drafted in an attempt to regain credit with gay and women’s groups after it opposed homosexual marriage last spring. One of the first steps planned by SOS homophobie, a campaign group, is the prosecution of football supporters who chant pédés (queers) at players who do not meet with their favour.

According to Les Chiennes de Garde (Guard Bitches), a feminist group, the law would act as a brake on the physical abuse of women “by first outlawing verbal violence”.

---end snip

So, a group calling itself "Guard Bitches" is railing against verbial violence against women? Ah, what would Peter Sellers do wes zeez group? Obviously, he would suspect a bimb-plot.