LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Vaccination exemptions bad for public health

In the issue of religious exemptions from vaccine requirements, we have a real public policy collision. There’s no way everybody gets what they want here. The matter is not particularly amenable to compromise. Unvaccinated kids either are or are not allowed to attend our public schools.

This is different from other “religious freedom” cases, in which the freedom in question is the right to deny service to someone on the basis of your, not their, religious belief. You don’t like gays, so you won’t serve them. You don’t believe in abortion, and so you refuse to help somebody else get one even though you’re a medical professional.

That paradigm can’t work. It makes everybody’s rights dependent on the religious beliefs of whoever they happen to encounter at the bakery, the hospital, or wherever else they go to get what they need. The model of religious freedom that could work for everybody is too modest, I guess, for today’s religious right.

That model promises merely that if you don’t believe in abortion, you don’t have to get one. These days, the point seems to be precisely that you should be empowered to express your religion on someone else’s life, not just your own.

The vaccine exemption debate is different. Anti-vaxers are only asking to refuse vaccines for their own kids. Here’s my question, though. As an anti-vaxer, are you saying that you disagree with the science and simply don’t believe that vaccines prevent infectious disease? There isn’t any empirical question about it: Vaccines work, but denial is still an option.

If you aren’t denying that vaccines prevent disease, is your position that your religious freedom is simply more important than public health? If that’s your bottom line, I’d like to hear you say it out loud. It might clarify matters.

Eric Kuhn, Middletown

Trump is fanning the flames of divide

Candidates for the Democratic nomination speak enthusiastically about policies they believe will improve life in America. Some are seen as radical, some more middle of the road. But not enough has been said about an extremely vital issue — that of the terrible polarization that has grown in our country over the last 25 years.

Trump has fanned the flames of that divide. Nothing is more important than figuring out how to bring a cooperative spirit back to our government. Our democracy, and the values we are rightfully proud of in our nation — respect for the law, striving for the ideals of a fair and just government for all — depend upon it.

Democracy is based upon people talking and listening to each other. Without respecting alternative points of view and working together, there is no democracy.

I am afraid Bernie Sanders is not the right person for the presidency, despite the fact that a lot of Americans, including myself, support many of his ideas. While his passion appeals to many, he is too adamant and combative in his style to be the kind of leader that will help bring us together.

Linda H. Zonana, Branford