NY parents grilled in ‘religious sincerity test’
Pete Chagnon
OneNewsNow
A family in New York is fighting for the rights of parents to opt their children out of vaccines.
Ron and Rita Palma of Bayport, New York, have been fighting for the right to opt their children out of the vaccines that public schools require children have before attending school. Parents are allowed to opt out of the medical requirement if they cite objections on religious grounds. The Palmas did so, citing their Catholic faith as a reason, but they were met with resistance from the Bayport-Blue Point Union Free School District. Rita Palma explains.
“I handed in my letter, handed in my application, and they called me in and insisted that I come in for a face-to-face interview,” she shares. “Now I know other people in the community who have gone through this, so I talked to some lawyers. I knew that they [school officials] were within their legal boundaries, and I really didn’t think that it was going to be all that much of a problem. You know, my feelings were true, my beliefs fit squarely with the law — so I complied.”
But Palma says she and her husband were grilled for two hours by the school’s attorney, David Cohen. She refers to the session as a “sincerity interview.”
