RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/the_religion_of_covid.html

On the signboard of our local church, all reference to Sunday Service and accompanying Bible texts have vanished. In their place we read the homily: Fewer Faces and Open Spaces, attributed not to the minister Gordon K. Brownmiller, but to British Columbia’s Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry, whose gospel has become definitive. Indeed, Bonnie Henry has become a hero of the people, a font of daily information and a source of comfort, delivered in the dulcet tones of motherly consolation. She is probably the most revered political figure in the province. She is lauded for having the wellbeing of its citizens at heart and does everything she can to soothe anxiety and discomfort, issuing instructions dedicated to public safety, including reminders to wear masks and maintain social distancing. She has become an epidemiological saint and Bonniolatry is all the rage.

And yet, as a high-ranking member of the government, Bonnie had no objection to the massive BLM demonstrations in our two major cities, Vancouver and Kelowna, leading to the predictable surge in Coronavirus cases, which she then disingenuously attributed to people gathering in bars. The glaring discrepancy did not register among her admiring votaries. For Bonnie Henry is an apostle of the Lord and must have her reasons too abstruse for ordinary citizens to apprehend — unless we accept the official canard that “racism” is a bigger virus than COVID and that something called “cultural health” — as the Democrats, following in the footsteps of the American Public Health Association, righteously assert — is far more important than the lives of individual people. In any event, for the people of this province, whatever Bonnie says, goes. She is the voice of God. And what a sweet, assuaging voice it is.

In this theological frame of reference, the virus naturally represents the wrath of the Lord against the denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah — that is, Vancouver and Kelowna — who were at one time indifferent to the gifts of authority and went about their sinful daily lives without a thought for higher things. Some complained about extortionate taxes. Some resented escalating prices. Many drove their vehicles with unprecedented recklessness, a notorious feature of the region, dramatically raising insurance rates. A few were known to go whoring after strange gods and even to vote Conservative. The Lord sent a plague to educate us and dispatched his prophet Bonnie Henry to steer us lovingly back to sacerdotal health, requiring us only to self-isolate, don masks and stay six feet away from one another. Covidianity has now become the new communion.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16496/pandemic-casinos-churches

[T]he government may not discriminate against religion in general or any particular religion in particular. It need not exempt religious institutions or practitioners from rules that are generally applicable to similarly situated institutions or citizens, but it may not impose especially onerous rules on religion that limit its free exercise.

Under the first amendment, churches hold a higher protected status than comparably sized and ventilated businesses. So, as an initial matter, it would appear unconstitutional for a state to prohibit church assemblies of more than 50 congregants, regardless of the size of the building, while allowing a casino to host up to half their usual number of gamblers, which in some cases can exceed 1,000. But Chief Justice Roberts introduced a judicial consideration that went beyond that initial consideration, namely the right of governors not to be second-guessed by judges during a pandemic emergency.”

“Where those broad limits are not exceeded, they should not be subject to second-guessing by an ‘unelected federal judiciary,’ which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people. See Garcia v. San Antonino Metropolitan Transit Authority, 409 U.S. 528, 545 (1985).” — US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

“But Covid-19 is not a blank check for a state to discriminate against religious people, religions organization religious services. There are certain constitutional red lines that a state may not cross even in a crisis. Those restrictions include racial discrimination, religious discrimination, and content-based suppression of speech.” — US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

If hard cases make bad law, emergencies make even worse law. Our case books are littered with awful judicial decisions authorizing presidents and governors to violate core constitutional rights in the name of coping with crises. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to intern more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent following the attack on Pearl Harbor was upheld by liberal justices. President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to detain citizens and deny them access to the writ of habeas corpus was upheld during the Civil War. Now that that we are experiencing a pandemic crisis, if history is any guide, we can expect some bad decisions.