When is it Legitimate to Claim a Religious Exemption
I wish there were more public discussion of religious exemptions. The majority of comments simply say, "If its someone's religion, it is exempt from the law." This is unworkable. Some are at least bringing up the topic.
The link author explains his thinking, some requests for exemption of mask and vaccination mandates are legitimate and others not. He is a Christian and urges Christians not to abuse the claim of religious liberty.
He says, for example, a political view such as, "There is too much government already," is not a religious argument appropriate for a religious exemption. It is a political statement.
He sited examples of Christian groups who first advocated compliance but changed their minds. It is hard, he writes, to conclude such a group justifies a religious exemption.
Several Christian groups have claimed discrimination when popular commercial gathering places, like casinos, were allowed to remain open when churches were mandated to close.
While bars, casinos and restaurants might demand to be open to keep themselves and their employees employed, this is not the argument churches make. They want the right to gather and spread disease. Theirs is not an economic argument.
What I don't get is the calculation by churches that some degree of death of members is a reasonable trade off for attending a church service. It is especially hard to understand when a church claims to be "right to life," i.e., against abortion because it causes a fetus dies. One thing consistent about "right-to-life" politics, it cares little about human life. The only important life is that of the fetus.
If it were left to me, the only churches who would qualify for a religious exemption to remain open during a pandemic would be those who are not active in right-to-life politics. Churches against abortion should remain closed until the threat to life from attending church has subsided.
I thought about commenting about today's excursion into loony left reasoning but I decided to abstain for 30 days. After 30 days, I may decide to spare myself even more self-imposed assaults on my intellect. Enjoy the vigorous debate.
ReplyDeleteI won't deny that some of the decisions regarding lockdown during COVID19 do not make sense. That's part of the reason why it got out of control. Measures were half-assed, inconsistent, and swayed too heavily by money.
ReplyDeleteI think potential religious discrimination in regards to the lockdown is a legitimate topic, but it's not because I think religious gatherings should have been allowed. It's because too many other such unessential gatherings should not have been allowed.
But religious exemption in light of routine pandemic protocol is a line of crap. A person's religious freedoms end where another person's rights begin, and that has been the entire problem coming from the COVID19 deniers this entire time. The fact of the matter is, the pandemic is over, and it has been since April. The fact that there are still people unnecessarily dying is directly the fault of the COVID19 deniers. I wouldn't even care if it wasn't for people I know who haven't been able to get emergency care because there is no room in the hospitals. My personal analysis of year over year mortality data says that more than a quarter of a million people have died as collateral damage since the beginning of COVID19, and I don't even have the data from the summer.
The aborted fetal cell argument doesn't work, either, unless folks are willing to boycott a third of the pharmaceutical industry along with any treatment that might be offered should one actually need COVID19 emergency care.
The bottom line in all of this, though, is that the anti-vax arguments haven't changed in over 20 years, and they are more silly now than they were then. I think that's where a significant amount of frustration comes from on this topic. I've been trying to explain to people for 20 years why, even if their arguments were correct (they're not), it's still not enough. But here we are, as we have gone from a tiny fringe group to a third of the population believing in this crap, our country has been brought to its knees because the general populace lacks understanding in such things as algebra and statistics.