Senate Bill 277 “requires almost all California schoolchildren to be fully vaccinated in order to attend public or private school, regardless of their parents’ personal or religious beliefs,” as the San Jose Mercury News reported.

“‘We are going to have a referendum to ask the public to put a hold on the law,’ said Palo Alto resident Christina Hildebrand, president and co-founder of A Voice For Choice. ‘We will continue to fight this — we are not going away,’ said the mother of two unvaccinated children.”

The prospect of a legal challenge was quickly downplayed by one of the bill’s coauthors, state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento. “The courts have been very clear that you don’t have a right to spread a communicable disease, that there’s a public interest in keeping our communities safe from disease,” he said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

So-called “herd immunity” has been hard to maintain in recent years in some parts of the state. As the Associated Press noted, “suburban areas have seen a decline in immunizations in the past decade, with some schools having immunization rates near 50 percent. Herd immunity for measles is between 92 and 94 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

A tipping point

The new law made California’s inoculation rules among the nation’s strictest. Only Mississippi and West Virginia also bar religious and personal exemptions while maintaining a narrow allowance for medical excuses. (“Unvaccinated children without a medical exemption would have to be home-schooled or study in small, private homeschooling groups,” Reuters noted.)

But as is often the case with California, the state’s about-face on vaccines was set upon by critics and supporters as a potential bellwether and momentum-shifter for similar regulations across the country.

Capturing an emerging consensus in the realm of health policy, Wired characterized the situation as a “historical inflection point.”

“If public health researchers and politicians can look carefully at the state of the state’s vaccination rates and disease numbers before and after SB277 is enacted, they’ll get a powerful tool to either support more bans of these exemptions — several of which are on the table in other states right now — or drive the United States toward different, perhaps more effective strategies to reduce vaccine-preventable disease.”

Pan himself lent his support to the idea that other states should follow where he has led California. “Asked if he thought California’s action would spark similar changes in other states, Pan said Brown’s swift action on the bill will send a ‘strong signal’ across the country,” reported the Mercury News. “Neither California nor any other state ‘wants to continue to see [outbreaks] happen in their neighborhoods,’ Pan said.”

A reversal for Brown

Supporters of California’s now-obsolete exemptions had put faith in Gov. Brown, who ensured not long ago that Golden State parents could claim a religious objection to vaccinating their children. “Brown’s decision to sign the bill marks an about-face for the former seminarian who three years ago opposed eliminating the religious exemption for school vaccines,” Reuters observed.

In 2012, signing prior legislation “requiring parents to consult a health professional before declining vaccinations for their schoolchildren,” Brown set up a special carve-out for those claiming an exemption on account of religious beliefs.

“In his signing statement Tuesday, the Democratic governor noted that the bill exempts children whose family medical histories lead a physician to recommend against immunization,” according to the Sacramento Bee. “But unlike in 2012, the former Jesuit seminarian said nothing about religion.”

This year, a North San Diego County school district roiled some Californians with concerns that its yoga program was too religious. As similar programs have spread around the country, yoga’s Hindu origins have raised questions about its compatibility with public school instruction.

But the nine schools in the Encinitas district had carried on the practice for years without much incident. “Encinitas introduced yoga as a pilot program to one of its nine elementary schools in 2011, resulting in just 40 to 45 of the 5,000 students being pulled out of the class by their parents,” Jurist reported. “Yoga is taught in many other schools in the U.S., but the Encinitas Union School District is reportedly the first of the school districts to offer classes on a full-time basis.”

As the Associated Press noted, the courses received three years worth of funding through the K.P. Jois Foundation, “a nonprofit group that promotes Ashtanga yoga” and “provides twice-weekly, 30-minute classes” at Encinitas schools.

A shaky case

Although both traditionally-minded Christians and strict secularists alike have been wary, the courts didn’t put much stock in plaintiff’s fears that yoga plunged students into inappropriate spiritual situations. Stephen Sedlock “said he became worried after reading an article that suggested yoga may not be safe for children,” according to NBC Los Angeles. “His wife, Jennifer, said the yoga program went against the first and second commandment of the Bible, which dictate ‘I am the Lord your God,’ and ‘you shall have no other gods before me.'”

The three-judge panel on California’s 4th District Court of Appeal disagreed. Located in San Diego, the panel unanimously denied that the state constitution’s religious freedom clause — seen as broader than the U.S. Constitution’s — barred instruction in yoga- and yoga-like poses.

“The record in this case contains abundant evidence that contemporary yoga is commonly practiced in the United States for reasons that are entirely distinct from religious ideology,” the panel ruled.

Threading the needle

In its defense, Encinitas was helped by the courses’ focus on physicality alone — and their strictly optional nature. But court records showed that the school district labored carefully in order to craft an approach to yoga that satisfied standards at the level of the constitutional, the state school system and parents themselves:

“The district hired its own expert to write a curriculum that conformed to California’s physical education standards. The district’s program focused on yoga poses, breathing, and relaxation, as well as helping instill such character traits as empathy and respect.

“After some initial parent complaints that the program was religious, the district made changes, such as removing Sanskrit and images of India, and renaming some positions (such as changing the ‘lotus’ position to ‘criss-cross applesauce.’)”

But in 2013, the Sedlocks decided to sue.

Although the language of California’s religious freedom protection differs from that in the federal Bill of Rights, state constitutional law has looked to Supreme Court jurisprudence in determining the merit of claims bearing on relevant claims. As a result, the court in the Sedlocks’ case looked to the so-called Lemon test, named for a landmark Supreme Court ruling handed down in 1971.

The Lemon test set up a three-part standard to give a contested program legitimacy. Then-Chief Justice Warren Burger formulated the standard:

“First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster “an excessive government entanglement with religion.”

The use of the Lemon test has not always been consistent, and the court has come under fire from analysts who have described it as an exercise in judicial activism. But in the Encinitas case, it contributed to a ruling that will likely hold. The Sedlocks were reportedly considering their options as to how to proceed, but no announcement of an appeal has been made.

By John Seiler

Hey, I thought we had “separation of state” in America? Even though it’s not exactly in the Constitution, but imposed by court rulings.

Anyway, Gov. Jerry Brown has been campaigning in churches for his tax increases. “We’ve got to take this message to the schools, to the colleges and, yes, to the churches, to the faith community that knows that man doesn’t live by bread alone,” said a man who himself is exceedingly wealthy because of oil deals his late father, former Gov. Pat Brown, made with the murderous dictator Sukarno of Indonesia.

That’s also a novel and highly convenient interpretation of Matthew 4:4. Here’s the context, from the first four verses:

¹Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

²And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

³And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

⁴But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

The devil was tempting Jesus with being able to feed the whole world with bread — an infernal premonition of the welfare state that Brown presides over, and wants to fund more with even higher taxes. Instead, Jesus replied, we’re supposed to live by “every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Moreover, many things the government now does — especially education, health care and marriage — used to be performed by churches, and in many cases still are, although on a smaller scale to what government does. Government, including Brown, has usurped the rightful sovereignty of churches and families over these functions.

Brown’s tax increase would slam the middle class and the poor with a sales tax increase. It also would hit wealthy people with higher income tax rates. Brown, slipping into faux religious concern again, said the rich “have been blessed, and they must join with us in blessing those that have not been as fortunate.”

But the rich already “bless” us by creating businesses and jobs. Taking away their money means fewer businesses and jobs, with more workers laid off and going on unemployment and welrare. The main thing this tax increase would do is push more of rich folks to leave a state where they’re being robbed.

Thou shalt not…

Tellingly, Brown did not bring up these Biblical admonitions from Exodus 20:

¹⁵Thou shalt not steal….

¹⁷Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

The tax increase money is not going to the poor or schools, either. It’s going to the bloated pensions of current retirees. David Crane, a budget expert and fellow Democrat of Brown’s, just wrote:

Most Californians would be surprised to learn that 100 percent of education’s share of the tax increase proposed by Governor Jerry Brown will go to pensions instead of classrooms. But that would be no surprise to longtime observers of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which administers teacher pensions.

So, all Brown is doing is using religion to push robbing people more to shovel stolen money to his political allies. It’s another con game.

If he wants to help the poor, he should heed the words of Matthew 19:

²¹Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

²²But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

Finally, in the Bible, God asks us to give to church or charity only 10 percent of what we have. Speaking of the priest Melchisedec, Hebrews 7:4 says, “Now consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.” In Old English, the word “tithe” even means “tenth.”

Yet, government today takes far more than that, at least 40 percent of most working people’s incomes. That means government considers itself four times as important as God. What blasphemous arrogance.

Aren’t you sick of the Marriage Wars?

In the latest development a court — who cares which one — upheld the decision of a lower court — who cares which one — that same-sex couples have a “right” to marriage.

But consider this. Governments arrogated to themselves control over marriage only about 175 years ago. Before that, marriage was under the purview of a couple, families and religions or ethical groups.

Since government took over marriage, the divorce rate has shot up to 50 percent. Would you buy a car from a company whose cars crashed half the time?

Here’s a better idea: Privatize marriage. Get government out the marriage business entirely.

If you want to get married, then do so as people used to. Talk to family. Get a preacher. Get hitched.

If you’re an agnostic or an atheist, then get someone from an ethics group to perform the ceremony. Or do it yourselves.

Which reminds me of an old Woody Allen joke, “I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time. She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic.”

Religions should take the lead. The more conservative religions have led the movement against government imposing same-sex “marriage.” But religions always lose these battles.

What these religions should do is ask their members not register marriages with the government, but only to marry under religious auspices.

Imagine if nobody showed up any more with county clerks to register marriages.

I realize that this could involve some legal complications involving children, estates, etc. Well, work them out within your religion.

And here’s an even more radical idea: Don’t register your kids with the government either. Hatch them in secret. Raise them on your own. Don’t tell the tyrants.

The Jefferson Starship even wrote a song about it, “Child is Coming,” with these lyrics:

A child is coming
A child is coming
A child is coming to you

What are we gonna do when Uncle Samuel comes around
Askin’ for the young one’s name
And lookin’ for the print of his hand for the files in their numbers game
I don’t want his chances for freedom to ever be that slim
Let’s not tell ’em about him.

Instead of trying to control government for our purposes, let’s ignore it — and get rid of it.

Feb. 7, 2012

Here’s a YouTube of “Child is Coming,” from the Starship’s great “Blows Against the Empire” album: