SC State Senator Proposes Bill To Remove Religious Exemptions For Vaccines In Public School Children

Legal Issues

from the thank-god dept

The current measles shitstorm in South Carolina has been burning for several months now, dating all the way back to October of 2025. What started with a bunch of counties that were undervaccinated for measles began spiraling out of control at the start of 2026. The federal tracker for measles cases is at best woefully out of date, or purposefully obfuscating the true degree of the problem at worst. That public tracker, which is updated every Friday, claims a current nationwide count of confirmed measles cases at 910. The current measles count in South Carolina alone, for this year, is 933. Once again we have a federal government program run by RFK Jr. that is behind, unprepared, and impotent.

In the absence of federal leadership, the states will attempt to take action on their own. And sometimes those actions will result in federal pushback from the very same people who are causing the problem through inaction in the first place. I have no doubt that will be the case with a South Carolina state senator’s attempt at a bill to remove the religious exemptions for vaccinations for public schools in the state.

The context here is that South Carolina has one of the most wide open programs for obtaining a religious exemption for a childhood vaccine in the country. I think only Florida might be considered more wide open, given that state has mostly removed all vaccination requirements for public schooling. In South Carolina, you essentially just have to whisper the word “religion” and you’re exempt.

But that wont’ be the case if Senator Margie Mathews gets her way.

Senator Margie Bright Matthews (D-Dist. 45) has introduced a bill that would eliminate religious exemptions for measles vaccinations for students in public K–12 schools and childcare settings. It’s a move that’s drawing both support and criticism across the state.

Matthews said the rising measles cases prompted her to step in with the proposed legislation in an effort to bolster public health and keep communities safe.

“The goal of the bill is simply to protect children and stop the spread of measles in South Carolina,” Matthews said.

Yes, of course it is. And the pushback that has already begun within the state is absurd. I know enough about religion, as well as religious demographics, to know with absolute certainty that the number of “religious exemptions” in South Carolina doesn’t remotely comport with the number of religious adherents to any religion that has anything to say about vaccinations. South Carolina is largely Protestant and Catholic, for instance. While Protestants have traditionally been in the vaccine hesitant camp, I have never heard a serious biblical argument made for that stance. Were one to even exist, I’m confident most of the people applying for exemptions couldn’t make it.

Instead, these people are vaccine hesitant for entirely non-religious reasons. And that, I will say, is their right. But this legislation suggests that nobody’s right to their religion includes the right to put the rest of their community in danger.

Senator Matthews stressed that the goal of the bill is to increase vaccination rates and limit the spread of measles.

“I plan on reminding them every time we have new cases in South Carolina, I plan on writing and requesting that my bill receive a hearing before the committee, so that we can have the influencers from South Carolina that are against this bill and that are for this bill, I would like to have public hearing in reference to it,” she said.

Despite my strict adherence to being non-religious, I am, in fact, sensitive to ensuring that we maintain the secular rights of those who don’t agree with me. It’s that secularism that has allowed the flourishing of both free speech and thought in this country as well as, perhaps ironically, of religion itself. All of that is just aces as far as I’m concerned.

But just like someone’s freedom of movement ends the moment their fist makes contact with my face, so too does the rights of religious freedom end at the point where it puts everyone else’s children in danger.

Filed Under: anti-vax, margie bright matthews, measles, religious freedom, south carolina, vaccine mandates

‘Hail Satan’ But For Break Rooms, As Trump Issues Guidance For Religious Freedom In Workplaces

Legal Issues

from the Baphomet-reporting-for-duty dept

Trump — perhaps more than other presidents — often feels compelled to present his religious bona fides. Of course, he naturally has none. But as often as evangelical figureheads proclaim him to be (their) God’s personal pick for POTUS, even Donald Trump occasionally feels obligated to give something back to a community that has given him so much and asked for literally nothing in return.

The evangelical crowd cheers Trump on as he sides with Israel’s genocide, something that becomes a bit more conflicted when entities like “Jews for Jesus” mix white evangelical traits with a far older religion that generally tends to reject the supposed existence of Jesus Christ.

While evangelicals do like to throw themselves on the cross on a regular basis, it’s not self-sacrifice. It’s self-service. Christians in America do love to portray themselves as persecuted, as though the mere existence threat of death metal human equality or a swear word within hearing distance is the exact equivalent of being thrown to the lions like they were back in the good old days. (They mostly weren’t, not even then.)

Trump is one of them, at least in terms of converting self-pity to an idiot’s interpretation of selflessness. And he definitely wants those votes. Conveniently, most evangelical Christians absolutely adore periodic ceremonial events, including those overseen by the same government they swear to Gawd might be persecuting them every time their preferred candidate loses an election and/or some minority scores a free lunch at school.

All in all, Christians have it pretty good in the United States. Most people treat them as mildly annoying at worst. And most Americans (despite plenty of evidence to the contrary) consider self-proclaimed Christians to be good neighbors, non-molesters of children, and potential sources of unsolicited marital advice.

And, because no one needed this more than Trump — a Christian hero despite his long history of sexual harassment, sexual assault, multiple marriages, sexualization of his own children, cheater at golf, and the proverbial rich man who, as the Bible says, would find it exceedingly difficult to enter the Kingdom of Heaven — Trump has delivered. We’re getting more religious “freedom” added to our alleged “separation of church and state”, whether we wanted it or not.

The Trump administration released guidance on Monday reminding federal agencies that religious expression in the workplace is protected by the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act — guidance that protects employees and supervisors seeking to recruit fellow federal workers to their religion.

Such expressions are protected as long as they do not cross into harassment, the guidance says. Wearing religious symbols and staging them in office cubicles is also protected, the guidance says, as are hosting prayer groups in empty offices and posting about religious events on office bulletin boards.

An agnostic (in the political and religious sense of the word) reaffirmation of religious rights is to be commended. This ain’t that, though. While it might be taken to mean that every other employee can throw down on a rug up to five times a day while facing Mecca without interference from their federal employers, I can absolutely guarantee you this only means anyone mildly criticizing someone for hassling their fellow employees daily about their weekly Bible study will be protected by this new guidance.

The guidance doesn’t seem to add much to what already exists in terms of protection of religious expression in the workplace. But what it does add definitely crosses the line. Listed as examples of protected expression by federal employees are these (and only these) examples:

A park ranger leading a tour through a national park may join her tour group in prayer.

A doctor at a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital may pray over his patient for her recovery.

While it does seem weird that a park ranger wouldn’t just hang back a bit and wait for the tour to finish praying (rather than joining them and giving them an implicit governmental blessing of their religious expression), it’s goddamn frightening that this “affirmation” of religious protections gives medical professionals (perhaps due for a scare quote…) permission to pray to their preferred god in hopes of securing a patient’s recovery. Hopefully, this is something a VA doctor might do in addition to providing actual, science-based treatment, rather than in lieu of anything stronger than some empty words hurled in the general direction of a power whose innate “higherness” has yet to be scientifically demonstrated.

That’s the bad news. The good news anyone of any religion can do a bunch of religious stuff at work without violating this guidance. Sure, there’s some vague stuff said about crossing the line into harassment, but the government bears the burden of proving this. And the fact that it’s the government loosening the reins on religious restrictions, that battle is more uphill than it ever was.

So… you know what to do, government drones? Pick literally any religion (if you don’t already have a preference) and litter cubicles, break rooms, and coworkers’ minds with its attendant detritus. I foresee a huge uptake in non-mainstream religions by government workers, who are now free to ask fellow workers if they’ve heard the good news about Satan or perhaps drape a holocaust cloak across their cubicle wall to inform others they’re not only adherents to the power of fire, but possibly willing to bodily wield it if need be.

Maybe you can just ask the names and sexes of fellow coworkers’ firstborn children because, according to your religion, Paimon will always need a willing (or even unwilling) male host. Those of you uncomfortable with small talk may just want to practice Santeria during allotted break times and/or spread salt around the entirety of the agency campus to help limit demon summoning-related chaos. If nothing else, a pithy ode to the greater of all evils is perhaps all that’s needed to brighten up a dull office:

Let’s just hope this Godsucker-pleasing performance results in a melting pot of every religion Trump has never considered real, much less realized actually exists. Christianity is — at best — running neck-and-neck with Islam. Only a white guy with a shit tan would have pushed this thing through without thinking it through. But that’s Trump for you: a guy who shoots first and fires people who ask questions later.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, church and state, constitution, religious freedom, trump administration

Would It Have Been Better To Let The Indiana Religious Freedom Law Stand And Let The Internet And Free Market Work?

Free Speech

from the yelping-bigots dept

Assuming you have a passing interest in politics and were awake for the past week or so, you’ve likely already heard all about Indiana’s recently passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Designed similarly to laws in several other states, including my home state of Illinois, the bill was designed to confer religious expression rights (further than the federal protection that already exists for individuals) onto business owners and the companies they operate. Depending on what you read and where you read it, there has been a great deal of confusion over what this law does and where it departs from similar laws in other states. The one distinction that appears to really matter, should you be interested, is that most of these kinds of laws include language that forbid their invocation as a defense at trial for discrimination in which the government is not a party, whereas Indiana’s law didn’t make that distinction. Indiana has since amended the law to protect the LGBT community, which has been particularly vocal in its opposition. Since the right of refusal on religious grounds to serve that community was really the impetus for this law to begin with, that pretty much leaves us where we were before the law was in place at all. Whether you agree with the law or think it legalized bigotry is a discussion for another place. What interests me is whether now, in the age of a democratized message available via the internet, the outcry to change the law was the most efficient course of action at all.

When discussing the benefits of the First Amendment, free speech, and the right to freely express ideas, most often the focus is placed on the value of protecting speech for the sake of the speakers. After all, should we begin to allow censorship of some speech, we might some day find that speech we wish to use has become censored. It’s a perfectly valid argument, but an incomplete one, because the other benefit of free speech is that, assuming it’s exercised, we don’t have to wonder about the stances and positions people take. What Indiana’s law did, in its original form, was offer business entities the same right to expose their opinions in the same way. And, in the age of Yelp reviews and online activism, are we really better off taking actions that push free speech, even speech we detest, underground, or are we better off giving companies an avenue for exposure.

Think again about Yelp reviews and recall the general trend for the stories we cover about them at Techdirt. Those posts tend to be of a couple varieties. Many are the sort that involve business owners suing over negative Yelp reviews. A couple of things to note about this when framed by a discussion on the Indiana law: First, this reaction to Yelp reviews means that online reviews matter to businesses, and with good reason. Customer reviews are often a first-stop on the consumer’s road to deciding where to spend their dollar. Online reviews are a powerful thing, in other words. As for suing over negative reviews, I think the case that such actions are valid would be diminished by a law that confers more expression rights to companies than not. After all, either you’re for free speech or you aren’t, Mr. Indiana Company. The road is traveled in both directions.

The other kind of Techdirt post you see concerning online customer reviews is of the activist sort, where a company has acted positively or poorly in one way or another and the general public took to review sites, such as Yelp, Google Plus, or Facebook pages, to express their support or disgust. You may recall the the whole Amy’s Baking Company fiasco that started with some crazy customer stories on Yelp, spun out of control on the show Kitchen Nightmares, and then exploded all over social media and review sites shortly thereafter. There, too, the owners of the establishment blamed Yelp reviews and “haters” for their misery, showing the power of the platform. If activism is a valid tool at all, it’s perhaps at its most powerful in the online world, where connections exist everywhere and activism can be democratized across city, state, and national lines.

So, in light of all that, the question for both sides of the argument on the Indiana law is whether either side was best served by amending the law and responding to the backlash, or if we would have all been better off trusting that enough information is shared at this point, and our country has made enough progress, generally speaking, to simply trust the combination of market forces and online speech and let the law stand as it was originally written. It feels strange to argue this, I’ll admit, but I think the latter might be true. Were I the one making these decisions, I would be tempted to let Indiana’s companies have their way and all the speech and rights to refuse service they might choose to take advantage of. Not because I would agree with their theology or their politics, but because I would trust the general public and the internet to work as a market force and solve the problem without further legislation.

Filed Under: free speech, indiana, online reviews, religious freedom, religious freedom restoration act, reviews

Australian Police Confiscate Pastafarian Man's Guns Because He Posed For His ID Card Wearing A Colander

Too Much Free Time

from the half-baked-noodle dept

I have to admit, the whole Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster thing is beautiful to me. The whole concept hits exactly the sweet spot of the irony bat for someone who preaches secularism in the face of a diverse population. If you somehow don’t know the history of this “church”, go read up on it. It’s completely worth it. The point being made by so-called pastafarians is one of keeping religion out of the government and vice versa. It started with combatting a misguided attempt to inject faith into public schools, but it has evolved to mock any attempt to bring religious dogma into the public square.

The latest example comes from Australia, where a self-described pastafarian went about mocking the rules set up for firearm ID pictures by wearing a colander on his head.

Guy Albon convinced the photographer that he was a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster so that he could wear the colander- a symbol of the satirical religious movement whose members refer to themselves as Pastafarians. The 30-year-old said he exploited a law that allows headgear to be worn in photos.

‘The law stipulates you can have something on your head,’ he said. ‘You have to have your entire face uncovered and if the headgear is being worn it has to have some religious significance. I thought ‘I’ve got this one in the bag’ – it was an absolute scream.’

And he’s right. After all, when you make an exemption allowing head-dress to be worn in government ID pictures so long as it represents something to do with your faith, the government then doesn’t get to question that faith, assuming that government affords people the freedom of religion. Which Australia does. And which this guy used to mock the entire concept of the exemption. But, hell, it’s not like the government could actually do anything about it, right? He’s following the rules.

Officers came to his home, where they seized two handguns and two rifles and ordered him to see a psychiatrist. According to Mr Albon, the psychiatrist immediately declared him as sane and ‘laughed it off’.

It’s the one thing they can’t do: set up rules based around faith and then persecute a man for following those rules. Yes he was mocking them, yes he wasn’t sincere in his religious conviction, but the reaction of the police opens up an entire can of worms that I don’t think they really want opened. The government exempting head-dress for pictures in order to keep themselves out of religion is one thing, and an admirable thing, but then going after someone for mocking that process via seemingly protected speech breaks the whole system. No, probably better for the government to just stay the hell out of the faith business entirely. Otherwise, you get stories like this, where a law-abiding citizen has his legally owned firearms temporarily removed because of a judgment call on his faith.

Filed Under: australia, church of the flying spaghetti monster, guns, pastafarian, religious freedom