What Freedoms Are Threatened During COVID-19 Crisis?

            The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns infringement on rights guaranteed under both the First Amendment and the Second Amendment. The coronavirus plague spreading across the land has brought out tyrannical tendencies in some Democrats authorities in several states.


            As governors of the various states began closing businesses, some governors considered gun stores to be essential and some declared them to be non-essential. Gun controllers argue that quarantined Americans will go mad and use their guns illegally. Gun owners want to be able to protect their families from out-of-control criminals. The sales of guns and ammunition have exploded since the invasion by the coronavirus. Some of the purchases have been prompted by concerns about losing the constitutional right to guns.

            
            Mayor de Blasio of New York City told churches and synagogues to shut down, or he would close them permanently. Members of a Baptist church in Mississippi were issued $500 citations for remaining in their cars at an outdoor service with their windows rolled up. The Governor of Kentucky wanted all churches closed on Easter to keep the coronavirus from spreading.  He did not even want drive in services where worshippers remained in individual cars and listened over the radio. One church took the matter to court, and the judge ruled against the state. He reminded the Louisville officials that America was founded and built on freedom of religion.

At the time of that Amendment’s ratification, religious liberty was among the American experiment’s most audacious guarantees. For millennia, soldiers had fought and killed to impose their religious doctrine on their neighbors. A century before America’s founding, in Germany alone, religious conflict took the lives of one out of every five men, women, and children. But not so in America.

            The judge pointed out that the decree was strictly against churches. He said that the city did not ban parking lots or drive in businesses, and he used the liquor industry as an example. Therefore, the judge decided that the city was trying to block all forms of worship even when the worshippers maintained appropriate social distancing. The judge basically said that if beer is “essential” then so is Easter.


            As the judge pointed out, there is danger in criminalizing religious behavior. The Freedom of Religion is the First Freedom. The Founders thought it was important enough that they listed Freedom of Religion in the First Amendment.


            Liberals have tried for years to take away the rights guaranteed under both the First and Second Amendments. Some of them decided that the coronavirus crisis was as good a time as any to act. Attorney General Bill Barr put officials on notice that he would act against all bans on religious freedom.