Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

If I were designing a constitutional system for a new country, I'd certainly include freedom of religion as one of the basic rights- while also codifying that there are no religious exemptions to any laws. Regardless of your faith, you are required to follow the same laws as your fellow citizens, without exception. Religious exemptions should not exist.

One of my issues with it is that 'religion' can mean whatever you want it to mean. There are absolutely zero, to my knowledge, religions whose founders or holy texts preached against vaccination. When did Christ or Mohamed say vaccinations were outlawed, exactly? And millions of believers take vaccines- but then some of them also claim that it's 'against their religion'. How is it against your religion, when none of the founders stated this, and the majority of people in your own religion are using vaccines without issue? Why not say that paying taxes or stop signs are against your religion next?

Exemptions allow bad faith claims that one's personal preferences are their 'religion'. They should be constitutionally outlawed

That's not really freedom of religion then, is it? "You can be Muslim (/Sikh/Mormon/etc.), but you can't wear the clothing prescribed by your religion", a la French secularism, is a weak accommodation that allows people to be a little different as long as they aren't too different. It is far short of actual freedom of conscience.

There are various ways around that issue; no prohibitions of purely religious activities, a clause about limiting that no exceptions to laws about health/security etc.

Someone inevitably becomes responsible for making that judgement call, and a record is thereby built up of the "State's interpretation of your religion"

Ergo, you have freedom of whatever the State decides your religion is... which is not compatible with Separation of Church and State.

These constitutional matters are so much thornier than they appear at first glance. I tell people this often.

I mean, judges in developed countries make these kind of judgement calls all the time, probably dozens of times a year in a country the size of the US. There's tons of well-developed common law around what is a legitimate expression of religion, what isn't, etc. Easily over 30 Supreme Court cases on this over the last couple of centuries. If I assert that I have a religious exemption to stop signs, taxes, gun laws, anti-discrimination laws, securities laws, etc. etc. judges can & do 'decide [what] your religion is', as you put it.

Unless you assert that literally zero laws apply to the religious, there's just no way around judges actually making these decisions

These ways around the problem are not unlike what we have in the US right now.

At that point you are far from "no religious exemptions to any laws."

You are straw-manning the argument as being simpler than it really is. Moderna for example states in their documentation that their vaccine was tested and actively developed with fetus cell lines that were taken (likely from abortion) far back in the 1960s, making taking that vaccine a possible complicity with "Thou shalt not kill." As an example of one argument. My point is that it is not as simple as you think.

Under that same argument, those people should avoid goods transported by truck because trucks kill thousands of people per year and they would be complicit.

You're just trying to keep up the lie that it's about religion at all. There are plenty of people in this thread openly admitting it's not about that, and they just don't feel like they should have to get the vax.

For my vaccine-hesitant family members, I can guarantee you it is about religion. The world is a lot broader than Hacker News.

Also, there is a difference between something that could cause death, and something that already has from people who were defenseless, but I don't want to get into the whole argument here.

Why religion and not freedom of belief, philosophy, custom, or venerable tradition? What makes religion special? Except for those exemptions, I mean.

Except that this law isn't preventing religious exceptions, it's a law to identify individuals who are claiming such.

> it's a law to identify individuals who are claiming such

Which means that they are now traceable and can be cross referenced against other databases.

> Except that this law

It isn't a law.

> it's a law to identify individuals who are claiming such.

No, it's an internal data system to track information on employee exemptions. So the employer can look up that someone claimed and was granted an exemption. (The regulation creating the requirement and the rules for exemptions already exists, this is just one agency creating the internal data system to track it's employee information necessary to apply the rules to it's workforce.)

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