What if we all wore pillow cases with eye holes cut out tomorrow. I’m sure the banks, airports, 7-11’s, police departments, traffic photos, tube security, etc won’t mind at all. We can all run around anonomously - Is that free enough for you? We are all free to hide our faces. Something tells me that we would get into lots of trouble.
I think that having a segment of our society being forced to wear tents and be incognito is wrong. If wearing that tent is so darn important then they can go back to the land of sand and to the middle ages. They can go back to where women are virtually slaves or worse. We in the 21st century world don’t have the time, energy, or patience to allow our security to be screwed up by tent wearing. We live in a world where women are equal to men and we are not letting a bunch of tent wearing primatives take us back to the Middle Ages.
We cannot hide our faces in a free society. It just cannot work if some are allowed to hide their faces and others are not. Batman, Robin, Superman, and Spiderman are ok.
Is that you Senator Byrd? (Sorry, I couldn't resist)
You're conflating a lot of things here.
For the record, I am not a total fool. I recognize that there are legitimate security concerns at play here. I spent some time in my career doing security policy and procedure, so I've given some of these things a lot of thought. My job was easy though, because I was in the corporate sector; civil liberties only apply broadly in civil society.
A private organization can impose strictures that the government can't. There are some places in which it is illegal to wander the streets in a mask, although it is questionable whether that restriction is Constitutional. It is perfectly Constitutional for me to forbid anyone from entering my store with their face covered, especially if I'm selling something that requires that I check ID. Observant Muslim women wouldn't consider going into a liquor store, so they're not likely to picket Mr. Know It All's Boozarama, however.
A Constitutional right to free association entails a right to privacy. Like all of our Constitutional rights, there is some point where "the public good" might put limits on them. But where do we draw the line? I've noticed that Freepers don't seem to like drawing lines for the Second Amendment (good for them). Why, then the First? It doesn't make sense to me. If I can't exercise my First Amendment rights in the public square, why should I be allowed to exercise my Second Amendment rights?
The idea that Western society faces some grave danger from women wearing tent-like garments seems plainly silly to me. When the Founders wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, al Wahab's new friends in the house of Saud had just started raining bloody death all over the Arabian peninsula in the name of fundamentalist Islam.
Jefferson and company were learned, worldly, men and were undoubtedly aware of the kind of mayhem that religious fanatics were causing — and could cause. Still, they authored an Amendment that would protect those fanatics' right to believe what they did. These men won a war against the greatest Empire in Earth history and they didn't hesitate to create a free society where "evildoers" could hide among us protected by privacy and rules against unwarranted surveillance. Did 9/11 turn us all into cowards who are afraid of our own freedom?