I have a colleague who is an Orthodox Jew. I’m forgetting the specifics of the story, but I believe he needed to take someone to the hospital, but was unwilling to do so because it would leave his wife and her father-in-law (!) home alone together.

It’s like you’re adding one of those “how do you get the fox, chicken, and seed across the river” puzzles into your life on a constant basis!

Unfortunately, people are too apt to judge by appearances. It isn’t enough to BE honest and honorable – you must also be SEEN to be honest and honorable.

I am married, female and a high school teacher. I like to believe that I have good relationships with my students, and a deep level of trust.

But I am very careful to never be alone with a student, especially a male one.

That practice has little to do with ‘appearances’. Thirty years ago in America, (and even twenty in many parts of the US) it was perfectly normal for a teacher to spend time alone with a student – usually to punish the student, sometimes to ensure the student got the homework time they needed. It wasn’t typically assumed to be a sexual event, despite the fact that American culture thirty years ago was even more anal retentive about ‘appearances’.
On the contrary – the practice changed because it was demonstrated, in many studies and many court cases, that the privilege of being alone with student created opportunities for abuse. And so, throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and so on, schools enacted stricter and stricter rules against it.

I am married, female and a high school teacher. I like to believe that I have good relationships with my students, and a deep level of trust.

But I am very careful to never be alone with a student, especially a male one.

Whatever the truth may be, people will judge by what they PERCEIVE the truth to be. Sad, but true. I understand Corey’s reasoning.

Women are required to dress ‘modestly’ because of the assumption that all women are inherently liable to cause irresistible sexual urges in men.
Likewise, all men are completely incapable of suppressing the urge to rape any passing female, and so the genders must be vigorously kept apart.

According to the ‘devout’, human kind is good for one thing only – fornication – and so we must constantly maintain a vigil to prevent the world wide orgy from taking place.

Sounds like some people have *really* low opinions of humanity. They need to get over it.

Seriously.

You would think that a lust-hating (obsessed) creator would simply create His subjects a little less pre-disposed to this kind of behavior. But only if you think….