The US Marines have established a beachhead on the shores of religious liberty.
The Marine Corps has granted two service members a permanent religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the first military branch to do so, the service announced Thursday in a regular update.The Corps says that, to date, it has received 3,350 requests for religious exemption to the mandate and processed 3,212. The two exemptions announced Thursday are the first for vaccines that the service has granted in at least the last 10 years.None of the other branches of the military has granted any religious exemptions for COVID-19 to date.
However, there are many more on the docket to be considered.
In its weekly Covid-19 update, the Marine Corps said it had received 3,350 requests for religious exemptions and had processed 3,212 of them. But for the first time, the Marine Corps said it had granted two of the requests. The service offered no additional information about why these specific requests had been granted.Each of the services has received several thousand requests for religious exemptions to the military’s vaccine mandate. But until this week, none of those requests have been granted, though the services still have many requests to process.According to the latest updates, the Navy received 3,038 religious exemption requests, though the service does not say how many have been processed. The Army has received 2,128 requests and rejected 162 so far. The Air Force has received 2,387 and rejected 229.
Given that double-vaccinated and boosted Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin became infected with covid, all requests should be granted if for no other reason than to boost morale. Given how ineffective the vaccines become over a relatively short period of time, and considering that the disease has mild to moderate symptoms on healthy, young adults, the decision would not jeopardize readiness.
Of course, that is assuming Biden’s military appointees want to support the troops. Frankly, based on their choices, that assumption is questionable.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY