A Hooter’s opened this week in my hometown, Slidell LA. Let's be honest. The main attraction at Hooters are not the wings.  The owl on the logo gives the restaurant (im)plausible deniability concerning the name of the restaurant.

Hooters is a restaurant that caters to people who think that it is a wholesome recreational activity to gawk at women's bodies. It is named after a slang word for breasts and features young women with who wear tight, revealing clothing. I went once to Hooters on a business trip in the late 1980’s.  I was embarrassed to be in there.  And this was well before I had my conversion experience.  I never went again. As I recall there were no 55 year old women as waitresses. None of the waitresses had any physical flaws that I can recall at all. There were no waiters whatsoever.

People say – “Oh they have the best wings in town.  I go for the wings.” Without tasting it, I would assert that the food there is ordinary, just like other chains. It is massed produced.  They have hundreds of stores in their chain.  It can’t help but be so. There are no culinary school graduates working at your local Hooters as chefs. If you are honest with yourself, the food is not better than Applebees, Ruby Tuesday’s, Buffalo Wild Wings or any of the innumerable national chains competing for your dining dollar.

No, the main attraction is not the food. This is a restaurant for male sexual stimulation. Men who argue otherwise are trying to fool themselves and others.   Women who approve of their spouses or boyfriend going there are just encouraging bad attitudes and bad behavior.

Men are not appreciating... they are gawking. Appreciating a woman means believing that - though she may be beautiful - she is worth more than the sum of her body parts. Appreciating a woman means showing your son that a woman's beauty, intelligence, emotions, and God-given ability to be a mother and a co-creator of life are just some of the many things that make her beautiful.

Hooters has done so well, that it has spurred imitators. In its’ article The Rise of the Breastaurants, the New York Daily News discussed the trend started by Hooters now picked up by other chains such as Twin Peaks (referring of course to a mountain range), and Tilted Kilt Pub where the young voluptuous servers wear tartan plaid mini-kilts and bras. You can read about the marketing angle of this genre of eateries here.

I know that there are members of my Church as well as other devout Christians around town who have already been to Hooters and have taken their teenage children there. I have seen the “likes” on Facebook as well as the on-line photographs.  Please don’t take this as a finger-wagging. I would however, appreciate it if you would read the entire article and consider the real implications.

As a Christian, married or single, is there anything wrong with going to a place to ogle and stare at women? Yes! By doing this, we are stripping the women of their dignity. This makes women into objects to be used for our own pleasure. The problem is that these young women are real persons, created by God, and deserving of respect because they are human beings.  It is not relevant that Hooters contributes to charities or that waitresses love working there. It is still wrong.

As Christians, when we patronize any of these Breastaurants, we are telling the world that this is good behavior.  What witness are we giving to those unchurched people who see our cars in the parking lots with our “Jesus Loves You” bumpers stickers and our rosaries hanging from the rear view mirrors?

If we take our sons to Hooters and other restaurants like it, we are teaching them - implicitly, if not explicitly - that people can be used for our gratification.  This is the same line of thinking that pushes the “demand” side of the abortion industry.  Women are objects to be used for my gratification. A pregnancy is just a minor inconvenience, and outcome of my gratification that can be taken care of.

Are the waitresses that work at Hooters “evil women?” No, I don’t think so. But they are mistaken about what, if any, good they are doing. Just like the women who dance in the bars on Bourbon Street, make pornography, or appear on television and film wearing flimsy and revealing outfits are mistaken about what they are doing. Good people often do bad things to satisfy needs - in some cases to earn money to eat, or pay the rent, or go to school. Good motives do not make bad actions into good actions.

People say women on the beach are dressed more scantily or that you see more or worse things on network TV.  Stop watching those shows.   We should be teaching our children and the world that all forms of human exploitation is bad.What do you think?