Veils Deplorable but Permitted

Are you living in the real world? Or a protected, wealthy environment where you go to nice cocktail parties, and your kids elite schools, and all you know are other well-educated, respectful, polite folks. Come down to earth a bit and visit our other world...I cannot believe you defend the burka! How would your precious cocktail parties flow, if all the women guests were wering them, your children's schools, your workplace...go ahead, tell me!
I suppose you willingly allow any heinous practice and its expression in our public places...Is there any practice you would ban? For Heaven's sake! We forbid every inhuman thing, from cock-fighting, dog-fighting, protect every species, protect children and ban drugs that may harm...yet clothe this practice in religion and everyone it all for it. Most of these commentators will not be running into hordes of women such as these on their streets as so feel quite comfortable with the occasional apparition...Thanks alot all you high-minded folks...You are safe knowing you won't have to really live with the consequences...

Hello Louise10,

"Of course government can prohibit wearing a burqa, and it should. There are basic norms of dress everyone must observe."

Governments can prohibit anything it wants, but that is not where most of us live. In a free society choice of dress is one of the freedoms that an individual makes for his or her own expression. A government of a free society should not prohibit the burqua. The exclusion to that should be for security purposes alone, and in that case it is the face that should be visible. The basic norms of dress are usually culturally based, (as is the burqua), and in a multi-cultural society the edges of culturally acceptable dress get expanded.
In my town, up until recently, it was allowable to walk in public naked, per an old city ordinance. It was not culturally acceptable and so few did it, and it is no longer legal. But in pre-Christian Polynesia nakedness was customary, as it was in many earth cultures.

I would consider reasonable, for security and unhindered social interaction, disallowing of masks and veils that obscure view of the face. I do not think it appropriate to legislate style of dress, though.

Of course government can prohibit wearing a burqa, and it should. There are basic norms of dress everyone must observe. No one can appear fully or partially naked in public. No adult can wear a mask in public (in my home town, this even applies to adults on Halloween night), since this could easily be a security risk. Children cannot wear masks during the ordinary school day. No one can drive a car with partially obscured vision.