COLUMNS

Cerabino: Religious exemption in PBC mask order adds to virus prey

Frank Cerabino
fcerabino@pbpost.com
Frank Cerabino

Palm Beach County’s emergency order to require masks be worn in public places has a significant flaw.

The order, enacted this week to stem the rapid rise of COVID-19 cases in the community, requires that facial coverings be worn in businesses, government buildings, Palm Tran buses, and outdoor public spaces where social distancing is not possible.

So far, so good.

Then it lists seven areas where the mask requirement is waived. Nearly all of them make sense: Kids under 2; While you’re eating; People with medical conditions that make mask-wearing unsafe.

But then there’s this exemption: “Persons with religious beliefs or practices for whom wearing a facial covering conflicts.”

This does nothing but undermine the emergency order in a way that empowers selfish, ill-informed malcontents to violate the order under the specious cloak of “religious liberty.”

For example, Nino Vitale, a Republican state legislator in Ohio who refuses to wear a mask and doesn’t want others to wear them, resorted to religious cover.

“When we think of the image and likeness of God, and that we’re created in the image of God, when we think of image, do we think of the chest, or our legs, or our arms?

“We think of their face. I don’t want to cover people’s faces,” he said. “That’s the image of God right there. And I want to see it in my brothers and sisters.”

There’s nothing holy or godly in spreading a communicable disease to others. And religious liberty has always been tempered by whether or not the practice harms others.

Airlines have already reported that travelers who refuse to wear face masks on commercial flights during the COVID-19 outbreak are citing unspecified religious reasons.

One woman who spoke at the Tuesday county meeting, accused Palm Beach County Commissioners of “obeying the Devil’s laws” by passing the mask order.

“Every single one of you is going to be punished by God,” she said. “You cannot escape God …

“What happened to Bill Gates? Why isn’t he in jail?” she rambled on. “Why is Hillary Clinton not in jail? Why are all these pedophiles who are demanding you to listen to their rules, why are they not in jail?

“It is because you’re part of them? You’re part of the Deep State?”

Does she get a “religious” exemption to potentially spread a deadly disease? If so, what is she, a Hannitarian?

I’ve been searching for actual religions that call it a sin to wear face coverings to stop the spread of global pandemic. But I haven’t found any yet.

Instead, there are stories of faith leaders from Islam, Judaism, Christianity and other religions urging followers to wear masks.

A coalition of 28 religious leaders in Utah issued a group message this week to urge people to wear face masks.

An imam in Ghana stopped a sermon at a mosque this month to remove a congregant who was not wearing a mask.

A rabbi in Philadelphia urged the mayor to put masks of the city statues of William Penn and Rocky Balboa to remind city residents to wear masks.

And in Thursday’s edition of the National Catholic Reporter news, a column by Mike Jordan Laskey appeared under the headline, “For Catholics, wearing a mask is an expression of true freedom.”

The column cites a passage in the Catholic Catechism:

“The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes,” it reads. “There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just.”

So, I’m at a loss to explain how not wearing a mask is a practice of religion.

I guess you can just make one up if you’re stopped by the Walmart greeter. Maybe you can call yourself a Maskodist or a member of the Maskonic Temple.

The religious-exemption provision in the county order is just empty language that does little else but allow dishonest or delusional people to make a foolish political statement at the expense of everyone’s health.

And that’s a presidential power.

Hashing out the boundaries of individual choice and public welfare isn’t something new.

At the turn of the 20th Century, Massachusetts was going through an outbreak of smallpox, and some of the citizens there were refusing to get the smallpox vaccine.

The city of Cambridge ordered adults to get the free vaccine or face a $5 fine. One objector, Henning Jacobson, took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with the city.

Justice John Marshall Harlan authored the majority opinion in the 7-2 ruling in the Jacobson v. Massachusetts case.

“In every well ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand,” Harlan wrote.

“Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own,” Harlan continued, “whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.”

Those words, written 115 years ago, still ring true.

fcerabino@pbpost.com

@FranklyFlorida