Tread lightly on religious liberty

Editorial by Wilmington Star-News, March 21, 2015.

Religious liberty seems to be a slippery concept in the North Carolina Senate.

Last month, senators passed a bill allowing magistrates to refuse to marry same-sex couples – without danger of being fired – if such weddings would violate their personal religious principles.

Last week, however, three senators filed a bill that would repeal parents' rights to refuse to have their children vaccinated, due to their religious beliefs.

Leave aside, for the moment, the whole issue of gay marriage. (Although the statute might open another constitutional can of worms. For instance, what if a police officer develops religious or moral scruples against enforcing drug laws?)

Consider, instead, vaccination. Orthodox medicine argues – with overwhelming evidence – that vaccinating children against highly contagious diseases is a good thing.

Various theories float around, often fueled by something somebody read on the Internet, that vaccinations are harmful. Most such theories – such as the notion that compounds in vaccines somehow cause autism – have been pretty thoroughly discredited.

In this case, it makes sense to require children to be vaccinated before they enter school, so they won't spread measles, whooping cough and other serious diseases (often, with long-term effects) to their classmates.

Yes, but ... some religions do object to vaccination.

Christian Science allows believers to opt out of using vaccines as a matter of individual conscience. The Family Research Council, with strong ties to evangelical Christian groups, has objected to mandatory vaccinations against the human papilloma virus on religious and moral grounds.

Religious scruples matter, and 48 of the 50 states recognize this in their vaccination laws. (The holdouts are Mississippi and West Virginia.) If magistrates have a right to their personal religious scruples, shouldn't parents have a right to raise their children in accordance with their faith, even if those beliefs aren't part of the mainstream?

Some senators worry that a number of parents are using the religious exemption as a cover for their own prejudices or daffy opinions.

Only about 1 percent of North Carolina children go unvaccinated for religious reasons, according to the latest figures. In some places, though – such as the Asheville area, which has become something of a haven for the state's latter-day Flower Children – the exemption rate has risen to something like 4 percent. That's potentially worrisome, but hardly seems a crisis.

OK: Perhaps we should tinker with wording and limit religious exemptions to those who are actually members of churches or faiths with these beliefs.

Beware, however, when the state begins to tread on religion – even what we might call a fringe religion. When government – even an elected legislature – starts to define which beliefs are OK and which can be suppressed, we're heading dangerously close to what the Founders referred to as "an establishment of religion."

Senators would be well advised to go slow on this bill and to think twice, or even three or four times, before approving it as it stands.

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