State and city vs. churches: Don't drink the 'religious freedom' Kool-Aid -- it's deadly [View all]

Last edited Sun Apr 12, 2020, 02:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Imagine that you awake one morning, get online and click on your favorite news site. You are greeted by this grisly headline: “Police Seek Death Cult Leaders After Ritual Human Sacrifice.” You read on to discover that these cultists have been rounding up victims to offer up as sacrifices to their God, killing them in indescribable ceremonies (drinking not just proverbial Kool-Aid, but the literal kind) and leaving their corpses on open-air altars. A couple of days later, you are relieved to see that the leaders of the sect have been arrested and charged with murder, only to discover that they are claiming that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects their actions, because the government may not interfere with or punish religious conduct.

Your reaction, I hope, would be that their religious freedom claim is preposterous. One person or group’s freedom of religion does not permit them to do harm to others, or to be exempt from the application of the societal ban on murder. You would expect that the courts would promptly reject the claim and try the murderers for their crimes.

And yet, this is precisely the claim that too many religious leaders have been making in recent days — that their right to free exercise gives them the right to kill their fellow citizens. Not, of course, in a human sacrifice straight out of a horror movie. But by holding services during a pandemic, despite knowing to a point of absolute certainty that people will die as a result. We must treat their argument exactly the same way we would react to the cult: with a firm, “Hell no,” and criminal sanctions.

Mass gatherings (religious and otherwise) spread COVID-19. There is massive evidence of this fact and no proof to the contrary. The dozens of cases and numerous deaths that resulted from a single church revival meeting in Dawson Springs, Kentucky. in mid-March is sobering, ample proof of what results when churches insist on conducting business as usual. And it is not just members of the church or those who voluntarily choose to attend who are put at risk. It is everyone they then come in contact with — and it is those people whose lives these church leaders are insisting must be sacrificed on the altar of their religious freedom.

Read more: https://www.leoweekly.com/2020/04/state-city-vs-churches-dont-drink-religious-freedom-kool-aid-deadly/
(Louisville Eccentric Observer)