"Laïcité" in France is nothing more than a policy to manage churches, and not even the only one, at that.

If tempted to make a statement, try to remplace "Laïcité" with "Concordat in Alsace-Moselle", see if it has become utterly ridiculous, and if it did please reconsider.

The notion that Laïcité is a core principle of a Republic trying to force some sort of atheism on the population is ahistoric, wrong, and a misunderstanding of crypto-racist talking points of French domestic politics.

The Republic accommodates elected officials attending and even organising religious ceremonies in their official capacity just fine.

The scene below happened in an area where Laïcité is in force. Estrosi was merely mocked — and for his hypocrisy, not for his religion.

Because he is a foremost example of a class of French politicians who refer to Laïcité as some sort of State atheism that somehow applies only to Muslims. Estrosi is just a nativist politician fanning racism, xenophobia and islamophobia.

If his fantasised version of Laïcité was in force, Estrosi would have been driven out from office and would be under investigation for sedition and "separatism".

But Laïcité is not that, Estrosi is all talk, and that talk only applies to vulnerable minorities.

Parallel with US politics: seeing Laïcité as State-mandated atheism intrinsic to the Republic is akin to buying the Second Amendment fable that dimwits with semi-auto rifles are essential to democracy: it's neither true nor what the text says, it's just a far-Right talking point.

The current French military has chaplains for the most represented religions — it is nothing like atheism in the Soviet Union. The angst of certain US commentators about a putative "freedom from religion rather than freedom of religion" says more about them than about France.

Seeing the comments, I am starting to suspect that an astonishing proportion of US commentators have inherited from the fundamentalist roots of their country the notion that religion is the only possible source of morality. The concept of secular society just frightens them.

This is a nominally serious writer, comparing contemporary France to Stalin's USSR and Mao's China.

I suppose the real problem with the Stalin's and Mao's regimes is that they had no "in God we trust" and "one nation under God" everywhere...

The USSR and China were repressing religion, killing people in the process.

France is managing churches in SOME PARTS of her territory by recognising no religion in particular (does not apply in Alsace, and there are chaplains in the military).

Totally the same thing, yeah.