Finding the right balance in matters of church and state will always be a struggle. The United States has done fairly well in keeping the two entities separate while protecting freedom of religious expression, even with the ongoing battles over school-sanctioned prayer and inserting Biblical creation into science classes.

The United States is at least in a better situation than what passes for religious freedom in France these days.

The lower house of the French Parliament passed a law last week banning the wearing of overt religious symbols — most notably Muslim head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crucifixes — in public schools.

The French Senate is expected to overwhelmingly approve the law next month.

French President Jacques Chirac said the bill affirms the “neutrality of our state schools.”

But this isn’t a move toward neutrality — it is outright aggression against students for whom wearing religious symbols and garb is a daily obligation.

For Chirac and his government to label, for instance, the wearing of an Islamic headscarf as a mere symbol shows a stupefying amount of ignorance and condescension.

Ironically, this law was supposed to help Muslims integrate into mainstream French society. But it appears just as likely to drive Muslim schoolchildren away from public schools and to fuel the anger of the Muslim fundamentalists.

Part of the push for this sweeping law was no doubt to eliminate any hand-wringing by French educators on which religious symbols to allow.

Americans are somewhat familiar with this — we have zero-tolerance laws that call for the suspension of kindergartners who carry nail files or dare to peck the cheek of a schoolmate.

Imagine such clumsy laws being applied to religious expression and you have a hint of why such an outright ban on religious symbols may not be so simple after all.

Indeed, it is distressing the ban passed with such overwhelming support in the French Parliament, as if government-sanctioned religious coercion was an inconsequential matter.

It is just another example of how the reasonable desire to eliminate societal conflict — in this case, religious fundamentalism — leads to stupid and rash measures.