I know, I know. … We’re not supposed to compare the tightening noose of the COVID-19 clampdown to Nazi-era tactics. But this development isn’t exactly just fine, either: LifeSite is reporting that an unvaccinated employee at a U.S. government-funded research lab left his job, rather than agreeing to wear a special badge that tells the world his personal medical information.
“As of today, I’m a former employee of Brookhaven National Laboratory,” John Rothermel told LifeSite in a phone interview Monday.
“I never was the most political person in the world, but this has just driven me to be an activist,” he said. “I have never in my life thought I would be calling the media, or standing in a picket line, or doing any of these things, or quit my job over a political issue, but here I am.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is a research facility that is funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). As a federal contractor, Brookhaven was required by the Biden Administration to mandate shots for their staff, but they went a step further—and then another step further, and another …
At first, the company offered special blue cards to employees who had been vaccinated, telling them it was optional to wear the cards on their I.D. badge lanyards. The blue cards were presented as a way to “make people feel more comfortable,” Rothermel says, but in reality they made it possible for employees to “police each other.” And before long, the optional blue badges became required for vaccinated employees to wear.
A married father of two and the sole breadwinner in his home, Rothermel tried to work with Brookhaven to keep his job. He is a pro-life Christian who refuses to get a shot that was developed using cells from aborted babies, and he applied for a religious exemption. After making him wait for nearly a month (and leaving him only two weeks until the vaccination deadline), Brookhaven approved Rothermel’s application and told him he could keep his job, but he would be required to get a COVID test weekly.
After Rothermel got his first test, he was given a bright orange card that showed his test date and told it was optional to wear it on his I.D. lanyard. You can guess where this is going. … A week later, after his second COVID test, the bright orange card had become a required accessory, to be worn and displayed by all the dirty unvaxx who worked at the company. And that was the last straw for Rothermel. “I walked into my boss’s office and handed over my resignation letter saying, ‘Too bad. Goodbye.’”
Mandated methods of visually identifying the dirty unvaxx aren’t new. Many businesses make mask-wearing optional for vaccinated employees while the unvaxx are required to wear them, for example. But this is the first time (at least, that I could find) that the unvaxx have been required to wear a glaring caution-colored badge of shame, basically instructing their co-workers to ostricize them.
The orange tag is disturbing because it signals to others that they should personally avoid and limit the freedoms of the wearer, who may well have been exempted for a perfectly good reason. This makes no sense if the mandating authority is just looking out for the well-being of its people. It makes perfect sense if the mandating authority is trying “to publicly identify, humiliate, and isolate” those who don’t obediently follow ze orders.
Source: PJ Media
