Anti-Vaxx Kentucky Teen Who Sued Over Unvaccinated Chickenpox Ban Now Has Chickenpox

Anti-Vaxx Kentucky Teen Who Sued Over Unvaccinated Chickenpox Ban Now Has Chickenpox

A Kentucky teen who sued the Northern Kentucky health department for religious discrimination for banning him from his private Catholic high school amid an outbreak of chickenpox has just contracted chickenpox. 

Jerome Kunkel, 18, a student at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Assumption Academy, said he has deeply-held beliefs against being inoculated with the chickenpox vaccine, NBC News reports.  He sued the health department in March, and lost. 

“The fact that I can’t finish my senior year in basketball, like, our last couple of games, it’s pretty devastating,” Kunkel said at the time. 

“I don’t believe in that vaccine at all and they are trying to push it on us,” Kunkel’s father, Bill Kunkel said.  He noted the vaccine was created from the tissue of two aborted fetuses. 

“As Christians we’re against abortion,” he added. 

He also bragged that as children, “we used to go to chickenpox parties.” 

In mid-March Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Assumption Academy had 32 documented cases of chickenpox, a highly-contagious disease which can cause brain swelling and even death. 

“These are deeply held religious beliefs, they’re sincerely held beliefs,” Kunkel’s family attorney Christopher Wiest said. “ From their perspective, they always recognized they were running the risk of getting it, and they were OK with it.” 

Wiest did not mention that by getting chickenpox Kunkel could then spread it.  He did, however, call the health dept. ’s ban “stupid.” 

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Christian Ministry Tells Teachers and Students They Must Support School’s Anti-Gay Beliefs – Some Are Quitting

Jacinta Tegman, the new head CRISTA, a massive $100 million Christian ministry in the state of Washington, has been pushing an anti-LGBTQ agenda since taking over in January.  She told the organization’s members that “sexual intimacy” must be “confined within the marriage of one man and woman.”  Over the summer the head of the organization’s K-12 King’s schools, Eric Rasmussen, sent families and faculty an email “to reaffirm the school’s core values, and repeated Tegman’s line that sexual expression only occurs within a heterosexual marriage,” the Seattle Times reports. 

The school now has a textbook that calls homosexuality “unnatural,” and “a result of the failure to worship God.”  Both claims are false. 

At least five teachers and two students have quit the school as a result of these attacks on LGBTQ people. 

And while families may be upset at the loss of the teachers and students, Tegman apparently is not. 

“This may not be the place for everybody,” Tegman told the Seattle Times. “ So if it’s not, we just want to make that clear so people can make a good decision whether they want to stay.” 

Some teachers questioned the email that was sent over the summer.  In response, the head of King’s schools responded. 

“You can continue to work at King’s if you are a Christian, confirm understanding and alignment with our doctrinal statement and willingly conduct your personal life and professional role of educating our students in a manner that is not in disunity with King’s theological beliefs,” he wrote. 

One teacher, Megan Troutman, called working at the school “an amazing experience,” but resigned, saying, “I cannot, in good faith or conscience, teach in a place that creates policies that negatively impact an entire section of the student population.” 

“I could not be complicit in a policy that could harm or ostracize any student.” 

One student spoke out after deciding to leave. 

“Colby Crispeno, 17, agreed” with Troutman. “ He attended King’s since preschool, but eventually decided to leave at the end of his sophomore year after coming out to his family as gay.” 

“Even as he struggled with depression and anxiety at King’s, he found solace in a family friend who taught there.  She too left the school over the summer,” the Times notes. 

“You don’t have to accept me or the LGBTQ+ community, but when you’re the head of the school and this decision brings some youth closer to suicide, you lose my respect,” Crispeno said. 

CRISTA “runs private schools, retirement communities and radio stations in addition to its international relief work.  The schools serve more than 1,300 students, from preschool to high-school,” the Times reports. 

Right-wing evangelical leaders often make grand displays of piety and sympathy for those in the path of deadly weather events like Hurricane Dorian.  But as Rewire. News’ Tony Keddie noted in an opinion column, those who preach the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” are in fact bringing further harm to these victims. 

“In between advertising her own books and promoting her rock star husband’s albums, Trump’s Prosperity Gospel confidant, Paula White-Cain, took a moment to acknowledge those affected by Hurricane Dorian,” wrote Keddie. “ White-Cain tweeted a link to the evangelical pastor Greg Laurie’s Fox News article defending ‘prayer’ as a legitimate response to mass shootings and hurricanes … This is surprising because Laurie has criticized Prosperity Gospel preachers like White-Cain for glorifying the human will more than the divine will and prayer can often be a point of contention in these debates.” 

“Whereas Laurie stresses ‘the power of the one we are praying to,’ White-Cain stresses the power of the one who is praying,” wrote Keddie. “ This is a subtle theological distinction that enables Prosperity Gospel preachers to insist that believers should bootstrap their way to physical and financial prosperity.  Shortly after tweeting out Laurie’s article, White-Cain used a Prosperity Gospel keyword, ‘favor’: ‘I pray open doors that no man can shut, favor, promotion, divine opportunities and connections for you to fulfill the purpose of God in the name of Jesus!’” 

The upshot, Keddie wrote, is that evangelists like White-Cain are preaching that God wills people to be self-sufficient and individualistic — and that they, like Republican political ideology generally, oppose government intervention to help the destitute.  Another example of this, he wrote, is Joel Osteen, the Houston megachurch pastor who did not open his doors to Hurricane Harvey victims until considerable public backlash. 

“Laurie and White-Cain present two prevalent views of free will that are often used to support Republican opposition to what they call ‘Big Government,’” wrote Keddie. “ Whether believers are supposed to rely more on God or themselves as a hurricane destroys their homes, they are not supposed to rely on the government.  Sure, Christian relief organizations like Samaritan’s Purse and Convoy of Hope might offer some aid, but their role in disbursing federal funds is also an indictment against government institutions of relief, as Inderpal Grewal observes in Saving the Security State, and they often come with strings attached.” 

“When we hear conservatives using the language of ‘prayers’ and ‘favor’ as a disaster strikes, it’s important to recognize that this pious rhetoric conceals neoliberal politics that impede the work of government institutions of disaster management,” concluded Keddie. 

NFL Star Dismisses Outrage Over His Support of Infamous Anti-LGBT Group: ‘I Do Not Support Any Groups That Discriminate’

Focus On The Family is one of the most well-funded anti-LGBTQ organizations in the country

Star New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees is angrily dismissing outrage from fans, including many supporters of the LGBTQ community, over his involvement with an infamous anti-LGBT organization, Focus on the Family.  The 42-year old group, one of the best-funded anti-gay organizations in the world, promotes and advocates for the harmful and destructive pseudo-science of “conversion therapy.”  LGBTQ people who have experienced it have likened it to torture. 

Brees says all he did was record a short video for kids for “Bring Your Bible to School Day,” a nationwide effort to use kids to indoctrinate and convert their classmates into Christianity, which is disturbing enough. 

But to make matters worse, “Bring Your Bible to School Day” is a program of Focus On The Family, which also actively opposes civil rights for LGBTQ people, including marriage and adoption. 

In a videotaped statement Brees defends making the video, and blasts those criticizing him for it. 

And in an astonishing act of ignorance, Brees concludes his videotaped statement by saying: “I do not support any groups that discriminate or that have their own agendas that are trying to promote inequality.  So, hopefully that will set the record straight.” 

Hopefully this sets the record straight with who I am and what I stand for.  Love, Respect, and Accept ALL.  I encourage you not to believe the negativity you read that says differently.  It’s simply not true.  Have a great day.  pic.twitter.com/4RdTahE7EZ

It might be written off as a wrong move by a football player who didn’t bother to consider what he was doing, but as Big Easy Magazine, which first reported on Brees’ “Bring Your Bible to School Day” video notes, he has been involved with Focus On The Family for nearly a decade. 

On Thursday Brees continued to defend his actions, telling reporters, “I was not aware of any of the things [Focus On The Family] said about them lobbying for anti-gay, any type of messaging for inequality of any type of hate-type related stuff.  I was not aware of that at all.” 

Drew Brees addresses his “National Bring Your Bible To School Day” video that appeared on Focus on The Family platforms. 

He said he was not aware of the group’s anti-LGBT views.  He says hate goes against everything being a Christian is all about.  pic.twitter.com/Jjhexqljo0