We look at what Charlie Kirk and the supreme court gets wrong about affirmative action. It doesn’t help unqualified people. Then we find out why the Christian Nationalist argument about protecting children falls apart when talking about religious exemptions to child abuse laws.
Tag: religious exemption
Put Kids First: Repeal Non-medical immunization exemptions
Ohio is one of 47 states to have a religious and reasons of conscience exemption to mandatory child immunization. It is those exemptions that led to outbreaks like the measles outbreak last year that reached 21 states including Ohio. The Secular Coalition for America is starting a new campaign to ‘Put Kids First’ by asking state legislatures to repeal non-medical exemptions to immunizations.
Indiana and Arkansas have changed their state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) to make it more explicit that it not be used by businesses to discriminate against LGBTs or others of different beliefs. RFRAs were originally created to protect minority religious beliefs from government overreach, like peyote use by Native Americans, and not to allow the majority religions to selectively honor the civil rights of others.
Josh Marshall over at Talkingpointsmemo.com had a great essay on the how RFRAs were perverted by the religious majority:
Indiana Governor Mike Pence trying to put lipstick on a pig
In a previous post, I used the title ‘Indiana Ends Fair And Equal Treatment‘ in response to Governor Pence signing a Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. RFRA’s have opened the door to discrimination since the federal version was used in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision back in June.
After my post went up I had a person on twitter try to claim that since the United States Supreme Court had ruled the federal RFRA constitutional and Indiana’s version is an exact copy of the federal version then there is no end to fair and equal treatment. That claim isn’t supported by the facts.
Did you know that many states, including Ohio, have religious exemptions for child abuse written into law? Short of killing the child, parents and people having custody of children can harm the health or safety of the child, by violating a duty of care, protection, or support – like refusing to get proper childhood vaccines or in the extreme, refusal of medical treatment for the child – as long as the abuse is due to the person’s religion. There is a new group collecting signatures on an online petition to get that exemption removed.
Here is one of the religious exemptions:
Not only did the recent Burwell v. Hobby Lobby US Supreme Court Decision give corporations religious rights that only individuals had under the 1st amendment, but the decision confirmed the religious have extra-consitutional rights. It’s all because of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was passed in 1993.
Dave Niose, from the American Humanist Association, explains: