Debate Surrounds Women-Only Basketball Tournament

    Strong debate has emerged related to the canceling of a women’s basketball tournament organized by a Muslim Community Organization (l’Association culturelle des musulmans de Vigneux) in a municipal gymnasium in Vigneux-sur-Seine (Essonne) which promised a women’s-only event. The event became so heated that the French minister of Sports, Bernard Laporte, visited the neighbourhood. The city’s mayor, Serge Poinsot, called the tournament discriminatory and refused to open the gymnasium for the event. Laporte concurred with Poinsot, stating That it’s a women’s sporting tournament is wonderful . . . but that one category is excluded, that’s to say men . . . in a public space is a contradiction of the laws of the Republic. Local officials plan to reexamine local secular values in the next municipal meeting at the end of the month.

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