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US Fed – Employee Religious Exception Request Information System

18 points by tr33house 5y ago

whb07 5y ago
Let's maintain a list full of what we perceive are our ideological enemies. Great!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- arcticbull 5y ago
  - imperio59 5y ago
    Organized religion does not need to forbid anything. Religion is about personal belief. The supreme court has already ruled what matters is what the individual believes not what the organized religious institution says.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      On the other hand, your religious freedoms end where my rights and freedoms begin. I cannot practice religious beliefs that allow me to harm myself or others and it is not crazy to believe that extends to practices which spread pestilence. I think this strikes the right balance, creating barriers for anti-vaxxers to jump through while still not forbidding free exercise of legitimate religious beliefs.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- gumby 5y ago
  Why assume that they are ideological enemies? I’m sure there are plenty of govt officials who filed such requests and many many more who, though they don’t object to vaccination, want to ensure that religious rights are protected and want to make sure that when they feel the need to object to something or ask for an exemption, that that will be honored. Certainly it’s worth collecting statistics on who requested what to guide in future rule making. I do think this kind of data collection should be conducted by the census bureau, which does have an expertise and practice on privacy-protecting statistics collection and analysis. Separately, it does appear that very few people care about their privacy at this level. People accept driving around with huge serial numbers attached to their vehicle for all to see; driving licenses with names and addresses on them; an inability to get an anonymous PO Box; electronic tolls that collect driver information rather than being anonymous…I could go on at great length.
azinman2 5y ago
I wonder if even a majority of people who file one have a legitimate religious objection instead of abusing this ability to get out of mandates.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  If one is young and already had Covid before vaccines were available, there is an ethical argument to be made that you should be allowed to give up your spot in line to the poor who are still waiting all around the world. If you want other people to make your ethical decisions for you when it comes to your own body, we know where that leads.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    There is no global waiting list, so whether one in the US takes a vaccine or not isn't going to result in someone else being able to get that same vaccine. Societies make decisions about health of its members all the time in many ways. Which, by the way, has nothing to do with religion and the topic on hand.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      As of now, Africa is still waiting for vaccines: https://www.kuow.org/stories/for-the-36-countries-with-the-lowest-vaccination-rates-supply-isn-t-the-only-issue https://www.kuow.org/stories/for-the-36-countries-with-the-l... It would be disinformation to suggest there is an over-abundance globally.
      - azinman2 5y ago
        I didn’t suggest there was a global over-abundance. I’m suggesting that distribution logistics and business models don’t mean leftover vaccines end up going to Africa. Go get vaccinated if you can. For so many reasons that are very well documented.
- imperio59 5y ago
  I wonder if the governments enforcing mandates have a legitimate reason to enforce them. There FTFY.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
Religious exemptions from vaccination are bullshit. 1)Objections based on "fetal cell lines" being used in development apply to such a large swath of drugs that anyone who held that view "legitimately" would be unable to accept almost any form of modern medical care - including "when you get home, take a tylenol for the pain." 2)No major religion supports vaccination exemptions. Most religious leaders have expressly prohibited their subordinates from granting religious exemptions. Even the Christian Scientists, who are literally an anti-medicine cult who think you get sick for sinning and prayer cures all, are pro covid vaccine. 3)Religious exemptions grant favorable/special privileges to people who claim to hold a particular religious view. That is not separation of church and state. That is endorsement of church, by the state.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  There's more of a moral maze when it comes to forced, mandated vaccination, which I think this is about. For example, it can be argued that it is an individuals right to choose what happens to their body, healthcare should be voluntary and people should expect no penalty in a healthy free society. That's different than if a vaccine is morally ok to choose voluntarily.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    No it’s not. We’ve had mandated vaccines forever and no one cared until it became political during covid. People made it political and people are avoiding vaccines for politic. blaming it protecting freedoms i stead harming public health for politics is a less morally corrupt stance to take.
    - Ancapistani 5y ago
      > We’ve had mandated vaccines forever That’s news to me.
      - Boxxed 5y ago
        My state requires about a half dozen vaccines (polio, HepB, MMR, ...) to attend any public school from K to college. For some reason there's some sort of collective amnesia about this and people are acting like this is the first time there's been a vaccine requirement.
antihipocrat 5y ago
If anyone can offer a reason as to why this system is beneficial to public health, safety or security, I'd love to hear it. I can only see a detriment to each if this law was put into effect.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Easy. It will dissuade people who don't hold legitimate religious beliefs forbidding vaccination (there are substantially zero of them) from using religious exemptions. This will increase the vaccination percentages, reducing spread and keeping ICUs available for folks who didn't elect their condition. [edit] I'm sorry, if you choose to prioritize conspiracy theories over your health and that of others, I'm not at all opposed to reasonable barriers to that. We've had vaccines since 1796.
  - imperio59 5y ago
    We've only had mRNA vaccines for two years. Also there are starting to be plenty of companies requiring boosters. Do you want to get a new experimental vaccine whose long term effects are poorly known every few months?
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      > We've only had mRNA vaccines for two years. First off, mRNA was discovered in the 1960s, first used for drug delivery in the 1970s, and vaccines in 1975. [1] The work to create these vaccines has been under way for almost 60 years. It also builds off the work of other coronavirus vaccines that have been in development since SARS and MERS about 20 years ago. If that's for some reason not sufficient, J&J, Covishield and AstraZeneca vaccines are not mRNA but instead adenoviral vector vaccines that have similar histories. [edit] Most vaccines take a long time to test due to the low prevalence of the disease in the population but given half of America is currently infected, it takes very little time to determine the safety and efficacy. Most drugs and vaccines were released publicly after a few thousand participants tried it. You're looking at billions of doses administered. You are not early. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
hash872 5y ago
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
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  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.
  - ceph_ 5y ago
    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.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      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.
imperio59 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  I agree that the register is a bad and dangerous road but can we all at least recognize that “religion” is actually “politics” in this case. We’re identifying blind trump loyalists who were tricked by the political system into choosing politics over public health.
  - floober 5y ago
    I'm not sure how meaningful it is to separate politics from religion at the the level of the individual person. Those two things are strongly interconnected and together constitute a large chunk of an individual's personal beliefs.
  - sebow 5y ago
    Since when refusing the vaccine is equivalent to being a "trumpist"? In case you're not aware of it, the biggest group in US who is "vaccine-hesitant" are higher-educated individuals with PhDs(and for reference the least hesitant one is individuals with masters).Though it shifts a bit over time, people with PhDs have never been exclusively right-wing, let alone trump loyalists.Usually the opposite actually. [0] - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/americans-with-phds-are-most-reluctant-to-get-vaccinated-against-covid/ar-AANjRHh https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/americans-with-phds-are-mo... [1] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      1. Both of those links are the same study, not different sources. 2. While PHDs are now the most hesitant education level, the source you linked shows a stronger correlation with the political affiliation of the county/state of the individual instead of education levels, where trump=hesitant.
foolinaround 5y ago
What is the rationale for the state to keep track of the religious preferences of its citizens in this manner? This can be used for nefarious purposes.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  Not to mention this should not even be required given the supreme court struct down the vaccine mandate for everything except medicare/medicaid facilities. [1] [Edit] Apparently federal facilities were not challenged. So only struck down for businesses. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-blocks-biden-vaccine-or-test-policy-large-businesses-2022-01-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-blocks-bid...
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Not to mention this should not even be required given the supreme court struct down the vaccine mandate for everything except medicare/medicaid facilities False. There were at least three federal mandates: (1) Federal workforce, (2) Federally-funded healthcare facilities, (3) Large businesses In recent Supreme Court decisions in cases challenging #2 and #3, #3 was struck down and #2 was upheld, #1 was not challenged in those cases. This database is concerned with #1, since it's an employee database for an agency within the federal government (hence why the employee database has a federal register notice.)
    - LinuxBender 5y ago
      Thankyou for the clarification and correcting my misunderstanding.
    - foolinaround 5y ago
      this mandate covers far more than federal employees. In this case, the mandate covers even contractors working for companies that have a federal contract in place, even if they or even their division has nothing to do with the contract. Eg, several big banks are covered by #1, the way it is written. These banks have as their contractors, large consulting companies - which now enforce on their end.
bushbaba 5y ago
I can’t say I personally trust giving the federal government this power. It’s ripe for future abuse.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I can’t say I personally trust giving the federal government this power. The power for a particular office to track whether it's employees have been granted an exemption to a workforce requirement that allows exemptions for certain causes? > It’s ripe for future abuse. How?
axpy906 5y ago
I agree. I don’t see how a government keeping a religious registry of its citizens is going to lead to anything good.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I don’t see how a government keeping a religious registry of its citizens is going to lead to anything good. This isn't a religious registry of US citizens, it's a workplace mandate exemption registry of the workforce of a particular government office.
  - axpy906 5y ago
    That will most likely include their religion…
sebow 5y ago
Good luck quantifying belief.What a dumb fucking idea.The 'issue' is that the employees are employed by the government, thus funded by public money.There are 2 obvious choices here, without the need to dig stupid reasons of "why people won't get vaccinated & how to 'flatted the curve'": The employee simply quits their job, or there is no forced vaccination.Anything else compares the status of 'normal' citizens and government employees being subjected in a different manner under laws & even the constitution.And this attempt of reasoning why people don't want to get vaxxed does nothing but empowers the former entity mentioned: the employer, the government. Refusing a medical procedure is a legitimate argument for the right to health & liberty just as much as accepting a handed syringe is.You don't even need to bring religion into this, but a certain segment of the population never gets tired of doing it.
dragonwriter 5y ago
The “US Fed" part of the headline is confusing. Its notice in the Federal Register of the D.C. Pretrial Services Agency establishing a tracking system for employee information. While it is a component of the federal government, it's not tracking information about general public, but of people who work for the agency, relative to exemption from a workplace requirement.

18 points by tr33house 5y ago

whb07 5y ago

Let's maintain a list full of what we perceive are our ideological enemies. Great!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arcticbull 5y ago
- imperio59 5y ago
  Organized religion does not need to forbid anything. Religion is about personal belief. The supreme court has already ruled what matters is what the individual believes not what the organized religious institution says.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    On the other hand, your religious freedoms end where my rights and freedoms begin. I cannot practice religious beliefs that allow me to harm myself or others and it is not crazy to believe that extends to practices which spread pestilence. I think this strikes the right balance, creating barriers for anti-vaxxers to jump through while still not forbidding free exercise of legitimate religious beliefs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
gumby 5y ago
Why assume that they are ideological enemies? I’m sure there are plenty of govt officials who filed such requests and many many more who, though they don’t object to vaccination, want to ensure that religious rights are protected and want to make sure that when they feel the need to object to something or ask for an exemption, that that will be honored. Certainly it’s worth collecting statistics on who requested what to guide in future rule making. I do think this kind of data collection should be conducted by the census bureau, which does have an expertise and practice on privacy-protecting statistics collection and analysis. Separately, it does appear that very few people care about their privacy at this level. People accept driving around with huge serial numbers attached to their vehicle for all to see; driving licenses with names and addresses on them; an inability to get an anonymous PO Box; electronic tolls that collect driver information rather than being anonymous…I could go on at great length.

azinman2 5y ago

I wonder if even a majority of people who file one have a legitimate religious objection instead of abusing this ability to get out of mandates.

mensetmanusman 5y ago
If one is young and already had Covid before vaccines were available, there is an ethical argument to be made that you should be allowed to give up your spot in line to the poor who are still waiting all around the world. If you want other people to make your ethical decisions for you when it comes to your own body, we know where that leads.
- azinman2 5y ago
  There is no global waiting list, so whether one in the US takes a vaccine or not isn't going to result in someone else being able to get that same vaccine. Societies make decisions about health of its members all the time in many ways. Which, by the way, has nothing to do with religion and the topic on hand.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    As of now, Africa is still waiting for vaccines: https://www.kuow.org/stories/for-the-36-countries-with-the-lowest-vaccination-rates-supply-isn-t-the-only-issue https://www.kuow.org/stories/for-the-36-countries-with-the-l... It would be disinformation to suggest there is an over-abundance globally.
    - azinman2 5y ago
      I didn’t suggest there was a global over-abundance. I’m suggesting that distribution logistics and business models don’t mean leftover vaccines end up going to Africa. Go get vaccinated if you can. For so many reasons that are very well documented.
imperio59 5y ago
I wonder if the governments enforcing mandates have a legitimate reason to enforce them. There FTFY.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

Religious exemptions from vaccination are bullshit. 1)Objections based on "fetal cell lines" being used in development apply to such a large swath of drugs that anyone who held that view "legitimately" would be unable to accept almost any form of modern medical care - including "when you get home, take a tylenol for the pain." 2)No major religion supports vaccination exemptions. Most religious leaders have expressly prohibited their subordinates from granting religious exemptions. Even the Christian Scientists, who are literally an anti-medicine cult who think you get sick for sinning and prayer cures all, are pro covid vaccine. 3)Religious exemptions grant favorable/special privileges to people who claim to hold a particular religious view. That is not separation of church and state. That is endorsement of church, by the state.

thinkingemote 5y ago
There's more of a moral maze when it comes to forced, mandated vaccination, which I think this is about. For example, it can be argued that it is an individuals right to choose what happens to their body, healthcare should be voluntary and people should expect no penalty in a healthy free society. That's different than if a vaccine is morally ok to choose voluntarily.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  No it’s not. We’ve had mandated vaccines forever and no one cared until it became political during covid. People made it political and people are avoiding vaccines for politic. blaming it protecting freedoms i stead harming public health for politics is a less morally corrupt stance to take.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    > We’ve had mandated vaccines forever That’s news to me.
    - Boxxed 5y ago
      My state requires about a half dozen vaccines (polio, HepB, MMR, ...) to attend any public school from K to college. For some reason there's some sort of collective amnesia about this and people are acting like this is the first time there's been a vaccine requirement.

antihipocrat 5y ago

If anyone can offer a reason as to why this system is beneficial to public health, safety or security, I'd love to hear it. I can only see a detriment to each if this law was put into effect.

arcticbull 5y ago
Easy. It will dissuade people who don't hold legitimate religious beliefs forbidding vaccination (there are substantially zero of them) from using religious exemptions. This will increase the vaccination percentages, reducing spread and keeping ICUs available for folks who didn't elect their condition. [edit] I'm sorry, if you choose to prioritize conspiracy theories over your health and that of others, I'm not at all opposed to reasonable barriers to that. We've had vaccines since 1796.
- imperio59 5y ago
  We've only had mRNA vaccines for two years. Also there are starting to be plenty of companies requiring boosters. Do you want to get a new experimental vaccine whose long term effects are poorly known every few months?
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    > We've only had mRNA vaccines for two years. First off, mRNA was discovered in the 1960s, first used for drug delivery in the 1970s, and vaccines in 1975. [1] The work to create these vaccines has been under way for almost 60 years. It also builds off the work of other coronavirus vaccines that have been in development since SARS and MERS about 20 years ago. If that's for some reason not sufficient, J&J, Covishield and AstraZeneca vaccines are not mRNA but instead adenoviral vector vaccines that have similar histories. [edit] Most vaccines take a long time to test due to the low prevalence of the disease in the population but given half of America is currently infected, it takes very little time to determine the safety and efficacy. Most drugs and vaccines were released publicly after a few thousand participants tried it. You're looking at billions of doses administered. You are not early. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w

hash872 5y ago

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

gjsman-1000 5y ago
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.
- ceph_ 5y ago
  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.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    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.

imperio59 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vineyardmike 5y ago
I agree that the register is a bad and dangerous road but can we all at least recognize that “religion” is actually “politics” in this case. We’re identifying blind trump loyalists who were tricked by the political system into choosing politics over public health.
- floober 5y ago
  I'm not sure how meaningful it is to separate politics from religion at the the level of the individual person. Those two things are strongly interconnected and together constitute a large chunk of an individual's personal beliefs.
- sebow 5y ago
  Since when refusing the vaccine is equivalent to being a "trumpist"? In case you're not aware of it, the biggest group in US who is "vaccine-hesitant" are higher-educated individuals with PhDs(and for reference the least hesitant one is individuals with masters).Though it shifts a bit over time, people with PhDs have never been exclusively right-wing, let alone trump loyalists.Usually the opposite actually. [0] - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/americans-with-phds-are-most-reluctant-to-get-vaccinated-against-covid/ar-AANjRHh https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/americans-with-phds-are-mo... [1] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    1. Both of those links are the same study, not different sources. 2. While PHDs are now the most hesitant education level, the source you linked shows a stronger correlation with the political affiliation of the county/state of the individual instead of education levels, where trump=hesitant.

foolinaround 5y ago

What is the rationale for the state to keep track of the religious preferences of its citizens in this manner? This can be used for nefarious purposes.

LinuxBender 5y ago
Not to mention this should not even be required given the supreme court struct down the vaccine mandate for everything except medicare/medicaid facilities. [1] [Edit] Apparently federal facilities were not challenged. So only struck down for businesses. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-blocks-biden-vaccine-or-test-policy-large-businesses-2022-01-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-blocks-bid...
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Not to mention this should not even be required given the supreme court struct down the vaccine mandate for everything except medicare/medicaid facilities False. There were at least three federal mandates: (1) Federal workforce, (2) Federally-funded healthcare facilities, (3) Large businesses In recent Supreme Court decisions in cases challenging #2 and #3, #3 was struck down and #2 was upheld, #1 was not challenged in those cases. This database is concerned with #1, since it's an employee database for an agency within the federal government (hence why the employee database has a federal register notice.)
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    Thankyou for the clarification and correcting my misunderstanding.
  - foolinaround 5y ago
    this mandate covers far more than federal employees. In this case, the mandate covers even contractors working for companies that have a federal contract in place, even if they or even their division has nothing to do with the contract. Eg, several big banks are covered by #1, the way it is written. These banks have as their contractors, large consulting companies - which now enforce on their end.

bushbaba 5y ago

I can’t say I personally trust giving the federal government this power. It’s ripe for future abuse.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> I can’t say I personally trust giving the federal government this power. The power for a particular office to track whether it's employees have been granted an exemption to a workforce requirement that allows exemptions for certain causes? > It’s ripe for future abuse. How?

axpy906 5y ago

I agree. I don’t see how a government keeping a religious registry of its citizens is going to lead to anything good.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> I don’t see how a government keeping a religious registry of its citizens is going to lead to anything good. This isn't a religious registry of US citizens, it's a workplace mandate exemption registry of the workforce of a particular government office.
- axpy906 5y ago
  That will most likely include their religion…

sebow 5y ago

Good luck quantifying belief.What a dumb fucking idea.The 'issue' is that the employees are employed by the government, thus funded by public money.There are 2 obvious choices here, without the need to dig stupid reasons of "why people won't get vaccinated & how to 'flatted the curve'": The employee simply quits their job, or there is no forced vaccination.Anything else compares the status of 'normal' citizens and government employees being subjected in a different manner under laws & even the constitution.And this attempt of reasoning why people don't want to get vaxxed does nothing but empowers the former entity mentioned: the employer, the government. Refusing a medical procedure is a legitimate argument for the right to health & liberty just as much as accepting a handed syringe is.You don't even need to bring religion into this, but a certain segment of the population never gets tired of doing it.

dragonwriter 5y ago

The “US Fed" part of the headline is confusing. Its notice in the Federal Register of the D.C. Pretrial Services Agency establishing a tracking system for employee information. While it is a component of the federal government, it's not tracking information about general public, but of people who work for the agency, relative to exemption from a workplace requirement.