We must laugh or we would go mad.
You live in New England. Chances are you have never encountered staight-up fundamentalism as anything more than a quaint throwback to the 19th century. Until you have felt its lash, you will never know how dangerous it is.
Does it look like ridicule? Is it ridiculous to hold a religious sect to all of its rules, and not just to the ones that are politically convenient? Is it ridiculous to use humor to point out just what those rules are, for those out there, like you, who have forgotten?