Sam2:
nisht and Joseph: Your argument is unfair and it doesn’t hold up. Why do I care if people incorrectly use being “Modern Orthodox” as an excuse. If I commit murder and say I did it because I’m a penguin, does that make me a penguin? Does that make all penguins murderers? It’s unfortunate that some people have confused the term “MO” with meaning “not actually Orthodox”. But that doesn’t make it true. I’m not a penguin, no matter how much I (or anyone else) claims I am.
But if you hang out with penguins all day, and you walk like a penguin, and you talk like a penguin, you probably are a penguin.
What I’m trying to convey with this increasingly convoluted moshol is that if self-identifying MO who are not Halachicly observant are excepted into MO society (shuls/schools specifically), and they conform to MO culture (dress/speech/etc), they are indeed MO. MO who do not live up to the MO ideals set out by the MO Rabbonim, but MO nonetheless.
Now this is in no way to indicate that all MO don’t keep Halacha; as I’ve said countless times, there are many MO who do. Both camps exist, both are MO, and yet they can’t be confused with one another.