Democratic Gov Threatens to Record License Plates of People Going to Church
Democratic Gov Threatens to Record License Plates of People Going to Church
By Daniel Greenfield
There are two Chinese viruses. We seem to have been infected by both the literal and the metaphorical one.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is receiving pushback from Republicans about his plan to record the license plate numbers of people who attend church services on Easter and have them quarantined afterward.
Beshear said Friday afternoon that Kentucky State Police troopers would be collecting the license plate information of people attending “mass gatherings” this weekend. He said local health departments would then notify those people that they need to quarantine at home for 14 days.
While he encouraged Kentuckians to celebrate Easter at home, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said in a tweet that he was “deeply concerned that our law enforcement officers are being asked to single out religious services.”
“Directing a uniformed presence at church services to record the identity of worshippers and to force a quarantine, while doing no such thing for the people gathered at retail stores or obtaining an abortion, is the definition of arbitrary,” he said.
Who expected Kentucky to resemble the USSR or Nazi Germany?
There’s a legitimate debate to have about religious services. Yes, there’s obviously a risk to any in-person gathering. On the other hand, the media and politicians have insisted on maintaining in-person news conferences with some social distancing.
Yet any proposal to have religious services with social distancing meets with harassment, no matter how little risk there might be.
A federal court judge bucked an order from Louisville, Ky., Mayor Greg Fischer (D) that disallows drive-in church services over the weekend amid the pandemic, saying the measures “criminalized” Easter celebrations.
On Fire Christian Church sued Fischer and the city of Louisville on Friday, claiming that the mayor’s directive for churches to forgo gatherings to aid in slowing the spread of the coronavirus violates constitutional rights and religious liberties.
U.S. District Judge Justin Walker issued a temporary restraining order Saturday, saying, “On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter,” the Louisville Courier Journal reported.
The judge banned the city government from “enforcing; attempting to enforce; threatening to enforce; or otherwise requiring compliance with any prohibition on drive-in church services at On Fire.”
What exactly was the risk here?
The church said it had been hosting drive-in services in the church parking lot for weeks due to stay-at-home orders, requiring cars to park six feet apart and instructing parishioners to remain in their vehicles.
If people are in their own cars, six feet apart, windows rolled up, what is the risk here?
There’s medically useful social distancing and social pressure that is inherently irrational, which leads to the arrest of people who are sitting alone at the beach or surfing on the ocean.