Confronting Religious Extremists.

If you're going to go out in public, you might catch... "woman cooties" if you sit too close to them.

That's a religion that needs to be updated for the 21st Century. Or else keep it behind closed doors.

I would not think businesses would strive to accommodate.

An El-Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv was turned into an “11-hour nightmare” after hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish passengers refused to sit next to women.

According to those on board the flight descended into chaos because of their demands.

The flight was full with Israelis, secular, orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews – known as Haredim – flying home to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.

Even though the passengers had been pre-assigned seats before boarding, the ultra-Orthodox Jews refused to accept the arrangements because their beliefs required that men and women were segregated.
...
"People stood in the aisles and refused to go forward," said Amit Ben-Natan, a passenger on the flight

"Although everyone had tickets with seat numbers that they purchased in advance, they asked us to trade seats with them, and even offered to pay money, since they cannot sit next to a woman.

“It was obvious that the plane won't take off as long as they keep standing in the aisles."

The flight took off after the haredim agreed to take their places to permit departure, before the chaos resumed once the seat belt signs were switched off.

What if their religious views said they could not sit next to a person of another ethnicity? Accomodate that?

I understand this is "tradition". But don't deny, it also contributes to the viewing of women as "others", which rightly should be mocked, and the religious practices continued only in private places...

ADDED: I have an idea. A bunch of drag queens should book trips to Tel Aviv on the Jewish religious holidays. Then, the extremists could be seated next to "women", but not really breaking the religious taboo (assuming the chromosomes count!)

Maybe they would be able to conquer their fears, and overcome their traditional teachings, by... working their way into sitting next to real women on planes... Baby steps. Overcoming a superiority complex is never easy.

(Actually, this was my thinking behind getting county clerks to issue marriage licenses to gay people: just send in enough "mixed identity" couples, so the county clerks are confused. Absent a "Drop Your Drawers and Prove It Up" mandate, it would be hard for your average county clerk to determine gender from outer appearances, on some folk.

You don't have to complete the paperwork and do the actual legal marrying part: the point would be to get the clerks to stop discriminating, and issue the licenses to two otherwise qualified people -- not married to another, passing any necessary blood test, of age, only two human people in the relationship, with proper identifying forms like birth certificates, etc.)