WorldNetDaily contributor J.M. Phelps has been largely focused on right-wing military narratives, such as complaining about the military not hating gay people enough. Turns out that Phelps is also an anti-vaxxer, which makes him fit in quite well at WND. An April 19 article by Phelps called on a chaplain hiding behind a fake name to complain about vaccine mandates in the military:
Next Friday, April 26, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to accept the case of 38 Defense Department military chaplains who are challenging Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s implementation and enforcement of the Biden administration’s 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
WND spoke to Chaplain Milton Corby (a pseudonym), one of 38 chaplains in Alvarado v. Austin who filed a petition with the Supreme Court to challenge the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ dismissal of their claims for an injunction against continued retaliation for requesting religious accommodation, as well as the district court’s dismissal of their constitutional and statutory claims.
Corby spoke to WND using a pseudonym because of concern over reprisals.
Arthur A. Schulcz Sr., a retired Vietnam War veteran and lead attorney for the case, told WND the chaplains on March 21 filed an application for injunctive relief with the Supreme Court, asking the high court to protect them from the Defense Department’s continuing retaliatory actions for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine due to their religious objection.
[…]According to the chaplains’ lawsuit, “The Department of Defense didn’t play by their own rules while strictly enforcing the mandate.” Varying within each branch of service, there are regulations in place that allow for the religious objection to specific issues, but these were not followed, Corby explained.
For this reason, he told WND, “SCOTUS [should] take our case because the Secretary of Defense’s mandate defied the religious conscience of thousands who were subsequently denied accommodation for their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
But neither Phelps nor his fake-name chaplain identified what, exactly, is the basis for a “religious objection” to vaccines, or why such an objection is targeted only at the COVID vaccine and not the many other vaccines members of the military are required to receive.
After the Supreme Court refused to take up the case, Phelps complained in a May 15 article:
To the disappointment of many, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 29 announced its decision to deny the petition by 38 military chaplains to reinstate their case revolving around the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The case, Alvarado v. Austin, requested that the Supreme Court vacate the Fourth Circuit’s dismissal of the chaplains’ constitutional and statutory claims arising from damages for having requested a religious exemption to the now-rescinded military vaccine mandate.
Army Col. Brad Lewis, one of the chaplains in the case, told WND he was “disheartened” by the Supreme Court’s decision not to take up their case.
[…]While he does not claim any sort of special dispensation, he does expect a chaplain like himself, or the others, to be held to a higher standard of sincere faith. “I put aside every possible vocation I could have taken, whether it was in the ministry or not, to become a chaplain” for the last 25 years, he said. “If this isn’t a measure of my sincerity, I don’t know what is.”
Again, neither Phelps nor his source this time, Lewis, explained what justifies anti-vaccine religious exemptions or why only the COVID vaccine is targeted. Still, he quoted Lewis as wildly claiming that the court’s refusal to take up the case, which purportedly wipes out “moral or ethical foundation for the application of our laws,” is “a recipe for tyranny.”
UPDATE: An April 1 article by Bob Unruh on the legal case, unlike Phelps, actually provides an explanation:
Their problem is that abortion component that is deeply embedded in the COVID shot regime.
Many are tested using cells from the kidneys of a baby girl likely aborted many years ago, but whose body parts were used to create a line of cells that scientists have maintained for decades.
Scientists call the girl HEK 293, for “human embryonic kidney” and the individual experiment in a series.
The Federalist notes that COVID-19 vaccines were tested on cells made from HEK 293’s kidney, and some of the shots have HEK 203 cells inside that.
In fact, the only COVID vaccine that includes fetal stem cells is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine; the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines do not, though HEK 293 stem cells were used during testing. Meanwhile, many religious faiths endorse vaccination; other non-COVID vaccines have used fetal stem cells, and the lawsuit apparently does not address those.