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Do you think religious exceptions from school vaccinations should be allowed or is that a crossing of church and state lines?James Rosten provides an excellent answer! I too am a very strong proponent of both religious freedom and parental autonomy, and I agree with his every particular.I grew up in suburban Chicago, and at one point when I was in elementary school — I’d guess around 1972 — there was a German Measles scare. So one day, everyone in our school went class by class to the gym to receive the vaccination. They lined us all up, gave us a quick and relatively painless injection, gave us cookies and juice, and we went back to class. It was no big deal for us, and, I strongly suspect, it was no big deal for any of the parents.The vaccine proved wonderfully effective, so much so that by the late 1990s, the infection rate from measles grew so low that measles was declared effectively eliminated from the U.S.Fast forward about 40 years, and I now live in New York City and I have two sons in the NYC Public School system. A program like the mass immunization of students in the 1970s could never occur today. And it has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the anti-science fear-mongering of the anti-vaccination crowd. And the NYC Dept. of Education has provided a strong assist to parents who (irrationally) chose not to vaccinate their children.NYC DOE policy mandates:“All students attending New York City Public Schools must be immunized against the following diseases: diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, Pneumococcal infection, Hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib).”But the mandate includes this caveat:“An exemption to this mandatory immunization requirement is permitted if the parent objects to the immunization because the parent holds genuine and sincere religious beliefs which are contrary to the requirement that the child be immunized.”It goes on to list rather strict requirements to receive this exemption, requirements that — in theory — make receiving the religious exemption a difficult process, subject to review.But in practice, it’s very easy to receive this exemption. There are form letters available online that you simply download and sign and submit to your local school. The exemption is almost always easily granted. And these letters are almost always submitted not by parents who have “genuine and sincere religious beliefs,” but by parents influenced by the anti-vaccination movement who fear vaccinations.You can read the policy here:http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/E369FA10-ABC0-43AB-BDE6-062F4ACF7D0D/0/Parentletterreexemptionreqs.pdfAs James Rosten expertly outlines, vaccination requirements do not violate the separation of Church and State, nor the religious protections in the First Amendment. But parents who claim a religious exemption as a means to assuage their anti-vaccination fears (or to support their political stances) are abusing the belief in separation of Church and State, and they are mocking the religious protections in the First Amendment.Every American who supports the Separation of Church and State and who believes in the theory and practice of the First Amendment should join in condemning the abuse of these religious exemptions.