Saturday, August 13, 2005

The Burka

There's a lot of wisdom in this one sentence by MoDo:

The most painless way for Muslim men to prove that they have not abandoned Arab culture and adopted Western ways is to tighten the burka.


This is true of the current obsessions of our religious conservatives as well. Old chestnuts - adultery (by males, at least) and divorce are no longer especially important. In fact, for the most part, individual behavior is no longer all that important, at least not more important than policy. Conservative religious morality in this country is increasingly defined by support of certain policies - anti-gay, funneling government money into churches, school prayer, anti-abortion. Personal moral behavior, except for actually having an abortion (easy to hide if you do) or having gay sex (easy to avoid if you're not actually gay, true for most people), is entirely left out of it.

It's pretty damn easy to be moral when all it requires is worrying about the morality of other people and not actually adjusting one's own behavior.