this soft bigotry of low expectations, holy **** sorry i'll go a bit on a rant/vent here because this whole situation is getting on my nerves. first of, not every muslim is "minimum wage" in Europe, even if they have more of a chance to be of working class than other categories. so that insane of an excuse doesn't work for all of them. secondly, there's so many other categories of the population that are working their asses off and making minimum wage. they don't go off and run over gay people, though. uneducated and poor working class population do have a tendency to be more homophobic, whatever ethnicity or religion they're a part of. but muslims (even educated ones) are undeniably more homophobic than any other population category. this 2019 French survey pictures it. 14% of French catholics find homosexuality to be a sickness, while 63% of French muslims do so. muslims are the most intolerant group by far according to the survey. the survey pooled 3k people, representative of the French population, with a a 2% margin error. and do not think that because it's from 2019, "it's outdated, they must be more tolerant now", no. French muslims and their descendants get more and more conservative as time passes, the unchecked radicalization and communitarianism being the main culprits. while muslim (north african, mainly) immigration to France has continously been a thing since the 60's, barely any French muslim before the 2000's wore hijabs or even cared about eating halal or not. now? it's socially mandatory to eat halal, my cousins as soon as they turned 18 immediately started wearing the hijab when that was something unthinkable even 15 years ago (even my very muslim mother found that worrying), or my own grandmother suddenly starting to wear the hijab when she didn't wear it at all when she came to France in the 70's. these must be harmless signs to a lot of you, but these are the very first signs of a current general radicalization process. now we've got French leftist politicians being openly justifying muslim homophobia, or even a local leftist lesbian politician who got forcefully taken down from participating in an election by her own party in "risk of losing the local muslim vote". this divide further is proven by how French rural areas (usually poor white working class, farmers) are MORE accepting than any other geographical category, including city-centers and suburbs: 10-11% find gays to be sick in isolated cities/rural areas, 14% for city centers, 21% for popular banlieues, the most intolerant areas in the whole country. banlieues usually are dense working class suburbs, populated by poor people of all ethnicities and religions but mostly immigrant muslims. muslims' only excuse for their homophobia is their religion mixed with the fact that they live in non-socially mixed areas, strenghtening their isolation from the rest of society. this is a failure of French social, integration and urbanism policy (as historically, banlieues were socially mixed but that changed suddenly when the white French middle class moved out of these areas starting in the 80's-90's to go live into single-family homes suburbs). so it's not just them being "poor", you cannot excuse everything on being poor. it's multiple factors, with religion being the main one because it is literally what enables their homophobia in the first place. sure, LGBT issues aren't their priority, but it isn't the priority of white working class and rural French people either, and yet... i currently live in a popular banlieue and i come from a muslim working class family. from my experience, i feel way safer in rural areas, mid-sized cities and middle-class suburbs than in big city-centers and banlieues. no one is saying muslims are all homophobic, bad, terrorists or whatever. some can be progressive and they have various degrees of belief. but denying these issues, defending islam, hiding it and ostracizing anyone who dares to speak out against these very dangerous issues is NOT the way to go. i consider myself to be a leftist, and yet the French left completely abandoned the historical working class, gay people and laรฏcitรฉ (secularism) in favour of gaining muslim votes. they only will have themselves to blame if they lose the 2027 French presidential elections. maybe if they took islam and immigration seriously instead of playing the ostrich? there's a LOT of very integrated immigrants in France recognizing this very issue, but the radicalized ones are completely ruining everything for everybody. but nah, it's way more leftist to make amendments as of lately to allow literal terrorists to work with orphan children, or to vote against a law enacting harsher measures against rapists. because what's more leftist and woke to allow terrorists and rapists roam freely, right? the French "far right" (they have more socialist policies than any american leftist could hope for lol) isn't any better with their fraud, racism and homophobic history. but i wouldn't blame anyone voting for them out of despair because they at least drastically visibly deradicalized themselves in the last few years, they have the most openly gay MP of any party in history. in all honesty, we're beyond fvcked in both cases, but at least it won't be islam ****!ng me in the second case i'm telling you, if a new leftist political force comes out of nowhere and dares to speak out against islam and immigration, they immediately would win a huge majority. i'm not joking. french people are desperately just waiting for that to happen