Sorry to jump in late. I don’t have as much time to read the boards as I used to.
Seems like there could be some kind of sex discrimination angle here somewhere. What if the military just said that everyone, men and women both, had to wear the full coverings and go out with a male escort (also covered)? Would it be taboo for men to be dressed this way? If this is a possibility, then it seems that McSally would have a case that she was being treated unequal to the men.
Don’t mean to drag up an old point, but how exactly would this be different from the following hypothetical:
The US establishes a base in Racistan. The locals consider blacks to be inferior and criminally-minded and do not let them go out without a white chaperone to keep them in line. Nor are they welcome to sit in the front of cars where they might be seen and offend the whites. Furthermore, non-white males are considered particularly dangerous and are not allowed to wear shirts, since locals fear they might conceal weapons. None of this is mandated by law for travellers, but gangs of locals have been known to attack those who do not comply.
Would the US military make black men take off their shirts before leaving the base, to lower the risk of unpleasantness?
I would hope not. Why compromise our fundamental values in the public face we show to the world? Every member of that base should enjoy the same rights and responsibilities as others of his rank. If relations are so delicate that that means restricting everyone to base or having everyone go shirtless, then so be it.
In the end, I find the gender argument much more compelling than the religious imposition. (yes… I know that gender is less well-protected than race or religion, but I’m appealing to core values, not legal precedent).
Fair enough, meara. I could probably construct a legal argument as to why a court may allow this regulation, but I agree that such a military regulation would be an abomination.
I think there are reasons why the “Abayah rule” is slightly more palatable, but I will beg off describing them now, for lack of time. If you want them, let me know, and I will provide them later tonight or tomorrow.
Sua
Well here’s what was in the back of my mind when I first brought up this analogy. It would seem to me that if one allows any variation in dress codes between men & women at all, then the door is opened to consider each case in terms of local sensibilities. And that while the Muslim dress code may seem extreme to us, it is not inherently different that any other local variation in public sensitivities. The specific case that I was thinking of was the topless case in NY, where the law attempted to distinguish between men going topless and women doing so. This was struck down by the State’s highest court in THE PEOPLE &C., RESPONDENT, v. RAMONA SANTORELLI AND MARY LOU SCHLOSS, APPELLANTS, ET AL., DEFENDANTS.
OTOH, the court did address the issue of disparate treatment, saying:
It would seem that the court accepted the theoretical idea of treating men and women differently, but struck it down in this instance because the basis for the difference was “rooted in centuries of prejudice and bias toward women”. It would seem to me that this statement is ridiculous in the case of toplessness - highly speculative at best. But a much stronger case could likely be made in the Saudi Arabian instance.
(Of course, this is a NY State Court, and their line of reasoning might not be accepted by federal courts).
At any rate, there would be no basis at all for a distinction between Blacks & Whites.
(On a more humerous note, see Woman in Buqa Condemns Woman in Chador, by The Onion)
Well, the military has the problem already. I claim no expertise in the various and arcane rules of military dress (especially the Navy - far as I can tell, Navy personnel have approximately 14,000 different uniforms to wear on different occasions ;)), but I’ve seen enough pictures and movies to know that, at least in some instances, a female’s uniform includes a skirt. I would expect that if said female was wearing trousers when she was supposed to be wearing a skirt, she would be out of uniform and possibly in trouble. Ditto, of course, for a male wearing a skirt when he was supposed to be wearing trousers.
Sua
I’m not entirely sure this is the case, if for no other reason than that men and women do have different clothing requirements. After all, most men have cocks, while most women don’t; most women have breasts, while most men don’t. (And in most cases the exceptions to these generalities will not be considered fit for military duty.) Clothing shaped to fit men may not fit women all that well, and vice versa. And men don’t generally have a need for special uniforms designed to accomodate maternity.
I don’t think anyone will reasonably consider tailoring uniform designs to measurable trends in differences by sex in body shape to amount to arbitrary discrimination. It’s when the design differences go beyond the purely pragmatic differences in form that you start walking a potentially difficult line. And it’s quite clear that the abayah is not merely a unisex garment tailored to fit a woman.
If she goes to trial and whines about how she can’t go off-base without wearing a ugly black tent that the men don’t have to wear, can the DoD put a man on the stand from Guantanamo Bay who can’t go off base at all?
Frankly, I’d have more sympathy for her if she’d just gone out wearing her uniform, been dragged back by the MP’s and was now fighting the rule after actually risking its consequences.
And, with prejudice and thus not at all a defensible debate point: you’d have to be right-wing idiot to make this a “bitchy woman” issue, or a left-wing jerk to see as a “prickly christian” issue. This is just the kind of prima donna crap that officers and especially pilots are always pulling.
IIRC, you sign the paper and go where they send you, do as they tell you. About the only thing you can legally refuse to do is commit war crimes.
(Sea story alert)Once when we pulled into Subic Bay, the Communist New Peoples Army threatened to kill one American serviceman from our amphib group for every armored personnel carrier that the US had just sold to the Phillipines. We were therefore confined to base for our own protection, too. (Lots of guys snuck over the fence to solicit the prostitutes anyway, so we started a betting pool to see who’d get shot.) Since guys in their 20’s are so horny, maybe we should have sued the DoD for discriminating against us as men!
I don’t think that’s the thought process that went into the NY law or State court decision that I cited. They were not dwelling on different tailoring for the same clothing - rather they were acknowledging that men & women might be compelled to dress differently and cover different body parts because the exposure of the same body parts had a different implication in men and women. This logic might be extended to other situations - in the local culture of Saudi Arabia a woman dressing as a man does might have a different connotation than a man dressing that way.
But again, that court seemed to feel that a cultural norm that was rooted in prejudice might be disregarded - this might certainly apply to the present situation.