Grr

I was standing in line in the Institute cultural hall, waiting to buy lunch for a dollar. A sister missionary comes in, hushes the crowd, and indicates a young woman who would be asking a blessing on the food. "Gentlemen, take off your hats," she requested, apparently oblivious to the fact that the person giving the prayer was wearing a baseball cap substantively identical to those many of the men wore. She prayed, and I noted aloud that she had been wearing a hat. While a couple of males near me in the line agreed that this was silly, a girl near us piped up with "well, girls are just special that way."

I'm sorry, but no. If we're going to use the Pauline pronouncement that it is a shame for a woman to pray with her head uncovered, we should (a) require women to wear hats while praying and (b) forbid them to speak in church. There's no reason to reject one rule from Paul while keeping another.

Perhaps this tradition made more sense in an era when women's hats were considerably different from men's hats, but now when the most popular style of headwear for both genders is the baseball cap, there's no reason not to ask all people to take their hats off during a prayer.