Juulie - that took a lot of chutzpah!

BTW, folks. She's addressing the "other" Mark, not me. Juulie already knows where I stand on being politically correct. ;)

I agree. It has nothing at all to do with the sport of basketball. The one is orders of magnitude more important than the other. If basketball were actually as important as faith, identity and the way one lives his life, I could see how you might dismiss such things as irrelevant to the game. But it is not.

The gensis of basketball was in a religious setting. Its sole purposes were to engage young Christian men in vigorous physical activity and to teach life lessons. It was then, and at its best will always remain, a means to a more important end. The wearing of a head scarf or yarmulke is, to many people, an important part of the end.

Like you, I am not particularly concerned with what is politically correct. Political correctness is too often driven by ignorance, fashion and hidden agenda. However, I am concerned with what is right and with getting life's priorities correct. So please, let's not confuse the end with the means.

To recap:
Faith, culture and identity = important ends
Basketball = insignificant means

I was doing a christian school game. We are about to tip off and one player is wearing a bracelet. I tell him to take it off and he says, "But it's a what would Jesus do bracelet," I replied, "Jesus would not wear it when he played." :D