Saturday, May 26, 2001
ROBERT KIRBY TRIBUNE COLUMNIST
The world of religious intolerance was cranked up another turn this week by the announcement in Afghanistan that non-Muslims must wear distinctive marks on their clothing to distinguish them from God's chosen.
The move drew immediate condemnation from religious groups and foreign governments, who call the move reminiscent of the Nazi order for Jews to wear a yellow Star of David.
Personally, I like the idea of mandatory religious badges. It saves a lot of worry and wonder about people. Please stop yelling until I finish. You may change your mind.
The difference between my idea and the incredibly stupid one ordered by the Taliban is that I don't want to pick on minorities. I want everyone to wear a badge.
First let's start with the nature of religion in the first place. It divides people. Most of us are something that other people are not: Catholic, Mormon, Jew, atheist, Buddhist and Gemini.
So, instead of just names, we would now have nametags, something cheesy that captured all the essence of, "Hi, I'm Ralph and a Lutheran."
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell the damned at a glance? Even better, you wouldn't waste time trying to convert someone who didn't need it.
Tell the truth, you've seen kids in white shirts and ties and wondered if they were Mormon missionaries, right? You had to look for the nametags to be sure.
This could work for everyone. With a single glance, you could size up a group and tell that it has so many Christians, one or two Hindus, possibly an atheist over there in the back, and, wow, even a cannibal. Wait, it gets even better.
The badges could announce what KIND of a member you were in a particular faith.
Suppose Christians had to wear a nice badge in the shape of, oh, say, a fish. A blue fish would further indicate that the wearer was a Baptist. If the fish were male, you'd know that it was a SOUTHERN Baptist. If the fish were frowning, you would know that the wearer was a backsliding Christian Southern Baptist. And if the fish had feet, well, then a backsliding Christian Southern Baptist with a really open mind.
For Mormons, this would be like wearing our temple recommends as nametags. No longer would we have to wonder about inviting Uncle Earl to the wedding ceremony because possibly his recommend had expired. If Uncle Earl were wearing the typical LDS badge in the shape of Salt Lake Temple, but it didn't have the tiny Angel Moroni pin on top of it, we would know that his recommend had expired or been yanked. This just keeps sounding better all the time, doesn't it?
If your goal were to marry an LDS returned missionary, BYU graduated, and 100% home teaching guy, wouldn't it be great if you could cull the singles dance just by looking around?
Something like this would drastically reduce the number of Homers you had to dance with in order to find Mr. Right.
About the only drawback I can see is that a religious badge would have to be awfully big to contain all the information we would need in order to figure out how to treat people.
Current estimates are that a badge that would sum up everything we needed to make a snap judgment about someone would weigh about the same as a manhole cover.
OK, never mind. I say we take everyone at face value.