Sure, we are obligated to follow Halacha even if it makes us look ridiculous in the eyes of the world. But if we start making things up that look ridiculous in the eyes of the world – things which make people laugh at Judaism, then in my view they are not serving God. They are serving the notion that their views are holier than anyone else’s – even within Orthodoxy.
I have no issue with how much Frumkeit they want to embrace. They can be as ‘Frum’ as they want internally. I could not care less. But when a (non)Chumra like this one hits the media, and makes us look ridiculous, they have crossed a line from Frum to foolish. They gain nothing spiritual at all (except perhaps in their own minds), for if that were a value at any level, the Torah would not have ever mentioned any female names.
And all of this doesn’t even touch the foolishness of blurring out the faces of women in a group photograph of the Israeli Prime Minster and his new cabinet ministers seen on the Charedi website B’Chadrei Charedim (…now there’s an oxymoron -‘Charedi website’) while allowing the rest of their bodies to be shown. (See above)
So even while they have a right to be as foolish as they want in private, when they do it in the public square, I have the right – and maybe even an obligation – to point out how foolish they are in public too.