Can we please get past the hyperbole around religious leaders loosely connected to candidates?

For a week or so, the huge story coursing through the veins of the mainstream media was Barack Obama’s connection to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Wright had said some pretty controversial stuff, like “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.” You can read more bombastic Wright excerpts in this article from ABC. Naturally there was all sorts of speculation about what this might do to Obama’s campaign. Now, the furor is generally agreed to be over thanks in no small part to the news cycle’s more recent obsession with Hillary Clinton’s disingenuous Balkans sniper fire remarks.

In a Tuesday article, the New York Times asks an astute question: why hasn’t John McCain’s connection to another religious leader who’s said a lot of controversial things drawn the same scrutiny or media frenzy? The article looks at the Rev. John C. Hagee, an evangelist who has drawn criticism for views thought to be hostile to Catholics and Jews, and endorsed McCain earlier this year.

Instead of getting big play on the network news, the NYT writes, McCain has been allowed to largely escape with the following explanation:
“In no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee’s views, which I obviously do not.” Hagee and McCain have both downplayed anything that could be damaging to the campaign, and focus has been on other issues.

It would be easy to criticize the hypocrisy of the 24 hour news media for jumping on Obama’s pastor but not McCain’s, or the right wing alarmists who criticized Wright but not Hagee, but this is beside the point.

Candidates should not be held responsible for the fringe views of any of their supporters, as long as they do not share those views themselves. Both candidates repudiated the most inflammatory statements, and it would be nice to stick with evaluating how all candidates might perform as president, rather than what a friend or supporter of theirs once said.

So, much to my surprise, Kevin Joyce — one of the Princeton students in the Times article I mentioned in my previous post — actually somehow came across my post, and responded. I had no idea that this blog actually has readers.

First, then, I should thank Kevin for the thoughtfulness and good faith of his comment, as well as the opportunity it affords me to tighten up some admittedly sloppily-made points in the earlier post. However he found this blog the first time, I hope he does again, because I want to address his points, but certainly stand by my original argument.
This is going to be a long-ish post, so above the jump, I’ll just say that I’m not sure why I kept using words like “abstinencers” and so on, when there is in fact, a perfectly good word — “abstainers.” One other point — I’m unsure how to refer to Kevin, so I’m going with first name, because he’s a college student like me, and I feel weird calling him “Joyce.” Kevin, call me Gabe. On the other side of the jump, I’ll get into more substantive stuff for those interested. (more…)

Here’s an interesting social experiment from our Crimson east coast peers.

Full Article: Harvard tries “women-only” gym hours

Harvard University has banned men from one of its gyms for a few hours a week to accommodate Muslim women who say it offends their sense of modesty to exercise in front of the opposite sex.

As open-minded and politically correct as this policy change may appear to be, it is a misguided approach to a fairly simple issue.

First of all, this is the request of six students. This is out of a total student body of roughly 19,000 (~6,700 undergraduate and ~12,300 graduate students). That makes a whopping 0.03% of the student body requesting this change. I’m all for making exceptions to university policies in order to accommodate more students but at what point does a line need to be drawn? Potentially inconveniencing 18,994 students for the benefit of six seems a little ridiculous.

Moving on from basic logistical absurdities, the ideological issues loaded into this policy are potentially devastating if the precedent is allowed to be set. If six people can request special treatment based on their religion at the cost of convenience to the entire student body, what is to stop every other group on campus from banding together and requesting their own private time to use the gym, or any other facility for that matter?

This policy is, purely and simply discrimination. Half of the student body is banned from using a university facility for no other reason than having a Y chromosome. This is sexism and discrimination in its most clear cut form and should not even be considered, much less made policy, at any institution in the country.

The problem here is that the population at large seems to have the misconception that the solution to conflicts of interest is a limitation of choice for one of the parties involved, when in fact the opposite is true. Nobody is FORCING these women to stay out of the gym, they are CHOOSING to do so of their own accord. The rest of the student body should not be punished because of this choice. Muslim females can pay for a membership to a local Curves health club if they truly feel it necessary. Better yet, the University can partially subsidize these memberships to support their choice to seek alternative facilities.

Institutionalizing discrimination in the name of tolerance seems oxymoronic but that is exactly what is happening at Harvard. Hopefully, when the issue comes up for review at the end of the semester the University will see the inherent hypocrisy and terrible precedent of its current policy and find an alternative solution to help assuage the concerns of these six female students.

-Mark