Saudi Clerics Claim Women Drivers Lead to Lack of Virgins

COMMENTARY | The Daily Mail is reporting that a study conducted by Saudi Arabia's religious council has predicted dire consequences if that country's ban on women driving were ever to be lifted. There will be a shortage of virgins and everyone will turn gay.

An upsurge in prostitution, divorce, and pornography would also result from women being allowed behind the wheel. No doubt this would be followed by fires, floods, earthquakes, and dogs and cats living together.

The ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia has been the subject of a campaign of civil disobedience by Saudi women. Saudi officials have responded by threatening such women drivers with being beaten.

Understandably, the Saudis had to come up with an excuse for not allowing women to drive aside from a misogynist attitude that is a blight in the modern world. So they had to concoct the specter of Saudi Arabia, where the two holiest cities in Islam, Mecca and Medina, are located becoming a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah.

And, really, don't the Saudis have a point? Women are allowed to drive in America, along with a lot of other things, like vote. There is no shortage of gay people, divorces, and pornography. There are still virgins, though, but they tend to be very young, very shy, or very religious.

The problem is that we in the West don't see much wrong with there being gay people, women who are not virgins, divorce, prostitution or pornography. These things are aspects of a free society. People who object to these things are welcome to remain virgins, not be gay, not divorce, and not use pornography. Most states in the union still consider prostitution illegal, but such laws have not put much of a dent in the world's oldest profession.

Of course, using the logic of the Saudi clerics, allowing men to drive leads to religious bigotry, support for terrorism, conspicuous consumption of oil wealth, and bad behavior of oil sheiks in western resorts such as the Riviera. Perhaps the Saudis should ban men from driving and allow women to drive just as an experiment to see what cultural effects result.

Source: Saudis fear there will be 'no more virgins' and people will turn gay if female drive ban is lifted, Daily Mail, December 1, 2011