One student at George Washington University is really annoyed that, in order to accommodate Muslim students, the school is allowing a one-hour period in which only women can use the gym pool. Writing for the school’s conservative student-run newspaper, The Patriot, Erin Mew complains:
The fundamental issues I have with female-only swim hours are as follows: you are asking everyone to accommodate your cultural/religious beliefs, and subsequently asking to be treated differently from everyone else. Likewise, you are asking every male student to get out of the pool because of your 7th century mindset, which is essentially sexist.
I am concerned that we strive to be so politically correct that we would be willing to compromise on some basic Western principles, all while sanctioning the further Islamization of America.
But Mew has a solution! A very weird solution.
As a white, conservative, Christian woman, I would like to make a proposition. I would like to have a Christian-only swim hour once a week at the Lerner Health and Wellness Center. That isn’t too much to ask, is it? Maybe I do not want to swim with certain people because they make me feel uncomfortable. Shouldn’t the university demonstrate to me that it is tolerant of my lifestyle and my beliefs?
The trouble with this argument, of course, is that no one actually benefits from Christian-only swim hour. Her lifestyle and beliefs don’t actually support the idea of such a swim period. This is just some reactionary crap. Christians are not generally prohibited from viewing the unclothed bodies of the opposite gender. Neither are College Republicans.
Though for $53,000 a year I’d think each GW student might have some reason to demand his own pool. [Image via]
