[temporaryvector]

Sure, but while I have not done the research to back it up, I have the general feeling that a lot of religious prohibitions and traditions can have their origins traced back to rules from antiquity that made sense back then (stuff like not eating shellfish, for example) which were presented with a religious veneer to make them more memorable/enforceable. Over time these prohibitions got entrenched, extended, distorted because of misunderstandings, blind faith or more cynically, desire for control and power, and the original motivations were forgotten. This is, of course, a conclusion I came to without a lot of research so I'd love to take the time to look for evidence either way.

If this is true, it would also follow that more fundamentalist regions would have stricter interpretations of those rules. I does not take much imagination to come up with a version of the US where religious fundamentalism leads to "No Hand Holding" signs, and I'm sure at least some people living in the US right now would approve of such controls (thankfully they are not the majority).