The latest edict from beard-obsessed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth adds strict new regulations to his crusade on facial hair, which rights groups have characterized as an attack on troops’ civil liberties.
In a March 11 memo, Hegseth, who has made grooming and appearances a central focus in his time at the helm of the U.S. military, raised the bar to qualify for a religious exemption to his blanket ban on beards. The guidelines lay out a strict new process by which service members may apply for a religious exemption and subject those who’ve already received one to a reevaluation, arguing they need to ensure their religious beliefs are “sincerely held” and have a genuine conflict with the grooming standards.
Service members who have spoken against Hegseth’s focus on grooming standards say his restrictions on beards are exclusionary to people from religious communities that require adherents to follow specific tenets of faith around beards, hair, and other grooming matters.
Sikhs, for example, who have served in the U.S. military since at least World War I, are required by their faith not to cut the hair on their head, to keep a beard, and to wrap their long hair in a turban. Members of many schools of Muslim tradition likewise have rules around beards and hair length.
It’s central to the problem. Individuals from religious groups sue employers (often successfully) citing that not hiring them or firing them for refusing to fulfill the job description would be discrimination. (This is not unique to any one group btw)
No. What I’m saying is that they should be solely responsible for the consequences of their faith. Other people should not be forced to give them special treatment due to their religion.
I wasn’t. I was creating a hypothetical of somebody non-religous (or at least not an adherent to a major religion) placing greater of equal value on not shaving as a religious person might. The point being that religious people are given preferential treatment as compared to everyone else.
There are certainly different ways for religious folks to be faithful. However, in the modern day, literal adherence to many modern religions essentially amount to centering your life around a myth. At best, it is a sign of being misguided and ignorant with regard to scientific fact (which is incompatible with those myths) and at worst it amounts to a delusion (yes, I will use that word). Willfully rejecting overwhelming evidence.
Somebody can be respectable in spite of that, but in my book, it is a clear negative.