The men and women in uniform were ordered to get a COVID shot or get booted. And while they have a right to seek religious exemptions, the high commanders appear not to care much about that.
As of Thursday, Marine Corps has adjudicated 3,080 of the 3,192 requests for religious accommodation concerning the COVID vaccine mandate of which none was granted, according to Marine Corps spokesman Capitan Ryan Bruce. As if trying to “comfort” those thousands of religious Marines who now face a discharge for refusing a COVID jab, he added that during the past seven years, no religious accommodations have been approved for any other vaccine either.
The Marines who spoke with Fox News said their religious exemption applications have been declined without consideration. Eight rejection letters provided to the outlet were reported to be “nearly identical” and cited “military readiness” as the reason behind the denial.
Per the outlet:
“I saw one package from a sergeant who had attached, like, 30 pages of material to substantiate why his belief was sincere, under no lawful obligation to do so,” the master sergeant said. “And then to have this as a response with no individual inquiry and just a generalized assertion of governmental interest is insulting.”
One of the chief warrant officers described the process of religious accommodations — or rather lack of such — as a “travesty,” and added:
People are getting blanket denials, they’re not addressing the individual concerns or beliefs of Marines who are submitting for religious accommodations, and I think that’s just horribly wrong. I honestly believe that they’re not really reading the packages.
The vicious attack on the servicemen’s sincerely held religious beliefs is viewed by many in the Corps as a “political purge” by the Biden administration that is forcing out the military’s “best and brightest.”
The Marine Corps required all active-duty Marines and Reserve members to be fully vaccinated by November 14 and December 14, respectively. After the deadline passed, 103 Marines were separated from the forces on the week of December 16. Per the Corps’ latest update, it has so far discharged 206 Marines with the vaccine refusal discharge code, according to Military.com.
The outlet adds that the Marine’s vaccination rates have been notably lower than those of the rest of the branches. While the final figures for fully vaccinated service members at the time of their respective deadlines for the Navy, Army, and Air Force stood at 96 percent, the Marine Corps reported a rate of 92 percent.
While the Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said that “there is always an option” to apply for a religious exemption from COVID shot, none of the military branches has allowed religious servicemen to forgo the shot.
The Government Executive reported last week that the Army received 1,746 requests for religious accommodation, has denied 85, approved zero, and is still processing the rest. The Navy has received 2,844 active-duty requests for religious accommodation and has approved zero. The Marine Corps has received 3,192 requests for religious accommodation and has approved zero. Finally, more than 10,000 Air Force and Space Force troops applied for a religious exemption, with 2,100 already being denied.
When asked earlier this month about the military denying religious exemption for the troops, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said that while the department “respected the right to worship,” he noted that such exemptions granted to the vaccinations are “typically historically very rare,” with such a “tradition” presumably validating the current policy of the blanket denial.
Kirby added that “This has absolutely nothing to do with trampling on the religious liberties of the men and women in uniform,” while further implying that the “safety” from COVID trumps the religious freedoms. “This is not about liberties, it’s about a military medical requirement to keep them safe, to keep their families safe, to keep their units safe,” he said.
While the Biden administration and the Department of Defense in particular underline that the COVID vaccination mandate for the military is needed to maintain military readiness, the latter will suffer drastically if the legal exemptions are further disregarded.
The Air Force has discharged 27 members for failing to comply with the vaccine mandate.
The Navy, which will not begin to discharge members until January indicated that 3,002 Ready Reserve sailors were listed as unvaccinated, missing the branch’s November 28 for vaccination.
The administration is portraying COVID as a deadly disease that will go away only when the 100-percent vaccination rate is achieved, and 82 active-duty personnel have died of COVID complications, per the latest DOD numbers. However, the rate of vaccine-related injuries and deaths connected to the vaccines has far outpaced the number of COVID-related casualties in the military, says Dr. Lee Merritt. While the exact number of adverse reactions to the jabs is unknown, the doctor says, “With the vaccine program we’ve ostensibly killed more of our young active duty people than COVID did,” citing numerous reports of tumors and over 80 cases of myocarditis (as of August) following the COVID shots given to the military.
In November, Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long, a senior U.S. Army aerospace medicine specialist who has treated soldiers injured by COVID vaccines, testified in the U.S. Senate that COVID vaccines pose a greater danger to the health of American servicemen and military readiness than COVID itself and condemned the Biden administration for treating men and women in uniform as “lab rats.” Long added that the Army Public Health Command confirmed to her that adverse events following the vaccination were not tracked, traced, or monitored.
Currently, the Biden administration is facing multiple legal challenges to the COVID vaccine mandate for the military, as The New American has reported (here and here).
