Employers, universities, or states offering religious exemptions cannot limit them to organized religion, because that would discriminate against those with sincere beliefs that are not part of an organized religion. Sincere beliefs?īut cracking down on the misuse of religious exemptions is quite difficult. This includes: statements from anti-vaccine activists who state publicly that they lied to get religious exemptions surveys on the reasons people do not vaccinate and the fact that most religions do not prohibit vaccines (in fact, many actively encourage or support them). In a previous paper, I pointed out that quite a bit of evidence suggests there is widespread misuse of religious exemptions. You are proposing to take away my right as a parent and for what? To protect other people?” In a recent hearing on a bill to remove Massachusetts’ religious exemption, a witness said that she used the religious exemption, “Not because it goes against my religion, but because I do not believe that it is necessary to put additional chemicals into my child’s body for an illness that she would fully recover from. And without policing, it is easy for those misled by anti-vaccine misinformation to use the religious exemption. The problem is that the same people who eagerly promote anti-vaccine misinformation are just as eager to misuse religion to avoid vaccinating, and have no hesitation or compunction about coaching others to do the same. The government policing people’s religion raises a number of thorny issues. This makes policing religious exemptions to vaccination hard – and rightly so. Religious freedom is a core value in the United States. Two major problems with granting religious exemptions to vaccine mandates are that they are very hard to police, and that they are routinely gamed.
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