Leilani and Dale Neuman stood by as their diabetic daughter slipped into sickness, then acute illness and finally death from diabetic ketoacidosis. As followers of an online faith community called Unleavened Bread Ministries, which rejects medicine, they did nothing as their little girl died of an entirely treatable condition. Tell me these people should not be punished.
God may, according to some of our beliefs, have had a hand in the tragic death of 11 year old, Kara Neumann, but her parents killed her. Now they have been charged by authorities in Marathon County WI, where they live and their daughter died, for their role in her death. Can anyone really be upset about this?
It’s not that I don’t treasure freedom of religion. I do. It’s not that I don’t have compassion on these parents who are suffering a pain which I pray no parent ever knows. It’s not even that their community is wrong about the fact that medicine is not well thought of in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. But there are moments when faith becomes so fanatical that it consigns others to a death not of their choosing and that is when we should all get worried. There are limits.
As the judge who ordered the couple to stand trial remarked, “The free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief, but not necessarily conduct”.