Mennonites, measles and homophobia. Update1,2: Parents whose child died of measles are still anti-vaxxers.
Or a stupid religion does stupid things.
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Measles in Gaines County
Key Point.
It is about Mennonites refusing to get vaccinated.
The first death from measles in Texas was announced yesterday.
https://dshs.state.tx.us/news-alerts/texas-announces-first-death-measles-outbreak
Dallas Morning News, Feb. 25, 2025, “Texas measles outbreak grows to 124 cases, possible exposure in San Marcos and San Antonio.”
This is for Feb. 25, 2025, I couldn’t find the number of cases for Feb. 27, 2025, but I am thinking it is much more. They mention 18 hospitalized.
This article has a curve for the number of case and you can see the line is going upward at a step angle.
Assoc. Press, Feb. 26, 2025, “Who are the Mennonites in a Texas community where measles is spreading?”
We learn that they are Old Colony Mennonites, a conservative branch.
Gaines county has a high rate of parents choosing to file for exemptions from the vaccination requirement. This is something they choose. It isn’t like they couldn’t afford it or it wasn’t available.
Gaines County is also home to one of the highest rates of school-aged children in Texas who have opted out of at least one required vaccine, with nearly 14% skipping a required dose last school year. [Boldface added.]
ArsTechnica, Feb 26, 2025, “Unvaccinated school-aged child dies of measles in Texas amid growing outbreak.”
They give the history of measles in the United States and explain what it was like before vaccines were available and how at one time measles had been eliminaed.
The current outbreak in Texas also involves a close-knit religious community—Mennonites—that has largely eschewed vaccination. The outbreak began in late January in Gaines County, which sits at the border with New Mexico. The county is one of the least vaccinated in the state, with coverage among kindergartners in the previous school year at just about 82 percent. That's significantly below the 95 percent threshold considered needed to prevent vaccine-preventable diseases from spreading in a community.
Since the outbreak began in Gaines, cases have risen to 124, now scattered across a total of nine Texas counties. There are also nine cases across the border from Gaines in New Mexico's Lea County. It remains unclear how cases spread to the state. [Boldface added.]
Assoc. Press, Feb. 10, 2025, “Fifteen cases of measles reported in small West Texas county with high rate of vaccine exemptions.”
Gaines County has one of the highest rates in Texas of school-aged children who opt out of at least one required vaccine: Nearly 14% of children from kindergarten through grade 12 had an exemption in the 2023-24 school year, which is more than five times the state average of 2.32% and beyond the national rate of 3.3%.
Anabaptist World, Feb. 20, 2025, “Texas community hit with measles outbreak.”
Anabaptists aren’t Baptist. Totally different. They include Mennonites and Amish.
They try to make excuses for this. But it is fairly obvious that they are religious people derailed from medical reality.
Gaines County is home to a significant number of Low German Mennonites in the Seminole area and has one of the highest rates of children who opt out of at least one required vaccine. Texas law allows children to get an exemption from school vaccines for reasons of conscience, including religious beliefs.
“The church isn’t the reason that they’re not vaccinated,” said Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton, who noted many families send their children to small private schools or are homeschooled. “It’s all personal choice and you can do whatever you want. It’s just that the community doesn’t go and get regular health care.”
https://anabaptistworld.org/texas-community-hit-with-measles-outbreak/
Lancet, April 2023, “Exacerbation of measles mortality by vaccine hesitancy worldwide.”
Says herd immunity requires 95% vaccination.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(23)00063-3/fulltext
Dallas Morning News, Feb. 26, 2025, “First measles case confirmed in Rockwall County, officials say.”
The Rockwall case was a returning international travler coming back from South Korea.
Again, herd immunity for highly contagious measles requires 95% vaccination.
This article has a map of the vaccination rates per Texas county at the end of the article.
Gaines County has 81.97%. Dallas has a vaccination of 94.26%. There are several counties where the vaccination rates are in the 60 to 70% range. Tarrent County is 91.52%. The counties around Dallas are in the low 90% range. So we are fairly isolated. Of course there are likely pockets of low vaccination in those counties, so we will see what happens.
The Dallas Morning News tries to give the Mennonites a free pass in this article.
It is obvious that many of the Mennonites are against vaccination, but the DMN has the low vaccination rates be a mystery instead.
The Dallas Morning News tries to give the Mennonites a free pass in this article also.
Update1,2: Parents of child who died of measles are still anti-vaxxers.
ArsTechnica, March 20, 2025, “Mom of child dead from measles: “Don’t do the shots,” my other 4 kids were fine.”
Subtitle was:
The interview downplayed the disease, maligned vaccines, touted unproven treatments
Dallas Morning News, March 24, 2025, “Parents of Texas child who died in measles outbreak say no to vaccine: ‘God does no wrong’”
Mennonites and Homosexuality
The Mennonites breakup and splinter and then the splinters breakup. So it is hard to make a definitive judgement, but most of the Mennonites appear to be homophobic.
Most Mennonite denominations hold a conservative position on homosexuality.[48]
The Mennonite Church in the Netherlands and the Mennonite Church USA which had 62,000 members in 2021, about 12% of American Mennonites,[50] permit same-sex marriage.[51][52]
Old Colony Mennonites are conservative Mennonite groups who are the majority of German speaking so-called Russian Mennonites that originated in the Chortitza Colony in Russia, including the Chortitza, Reinlander, and Sommerfelder groups, which are now most common in Latin America and Canada. There are some 400,000 Russian Mennonites in the world, including children and not yet baptized young people. They should not be confused with Old Order Mennonites with whom they have some similarities.
From the above 88% are anti-Gay. About half of the Mennonite churches in Gaines county on Google maps don’t have websites listed and the one I did find, didn’t say what denomination they were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites
This anti-Gay website discusses homosexuality and the Mennonite Church, USA. Basically, when they tried to not be anti-Gay, their denomination fell apart. They don’t represent more than a fraction of Mennonites and most of them were not supportive of Gays.
There is a Gay Mennonite group begging to be let into the Mennonite faith.
Advice for the Dallas Fort Worth LGBT about measles
Get vaccinated and get vaccinated soon.
When the fifth or sixth child dies of measles, a lot of people while suddenly want to get themselves and their children vaccinated, and there could be a shortage of vaccine. (A shortage of vaccine did develop in places in Texas.)
With anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of health, he might not prohibit you from getting the vaccines, but government standards in regards to what is needed or recommended could be changed and your insurance might not pay for it.
Or they might decide that it is unsafe and you simply won’t be able to get it without traveling outside the country.
However, even with vaccination, you still have a chance of getting it. It is much reduced, but it is still possible. You will need to do things to reduce risks. I would make sure you have masks and sterilizing solutions before they are sold out.
I am going to put a link to a general guidance in the newsletter about dealing with a pandemic besides getting vaccinated here in this post when I write it.
This explains the concept of differential advantages over homophobes.
Mennonites and the LGBT
Being responsible for a pandemic hurts a religion’s reputation. This is an article from The University of Chicago Divinity School, Dec. 9, 2021, titled, “Christian Apocalypse in Pandemic-Stricken South Korea.”
The reputation of Christianity took a beating.
https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/christian-apocalypse-pandemic-stricken-south-korea
When cases of measles appear in Texas neighborhoods, the reputation of the Mennonites will be impacted severely. They won’t have credibilityh and they won’t be able to push homophobia as much. We should make reference to measles theology when talking about them.
The think the brothers and sisters of the children who die will realize that their parents are religious lunatics who caused the needless death of their sibling and risked the lives of their children. (See links in a previous section of about the anti-vaxxer parents of the child who died.)
The children who were hospitalized will realize when they get older their parents were religious lunatics and they could have died.
It won’t just be the children of Mennonites who will be impacted by this measles outbreak. There are other anti-vaxxers with other religious beliefs and their religion’s reputation will be impacted and their children will remember. These are largely Evangelicals who are mostly homophobes.
We can expect that memberships in homophobic religions will be negatively impacted.
We need to make sure that the sentimental syrup branches of Christianity and the LGBT don’t let them off the hook.
NOTE: German measles is something different than measles. They are caused by differen viruss. German measles is rubella and measles is Rubeola. I learned his in reading abou a German measles case in San Antonio at the Legacy Traditional School.
Evidently, getting vaccinated with the MMR vaccine isn’t a tradition there.
There is a cost to freedom, and the individual assuming freedom must be willing,as an individual to pay the price. The child could never be held responsible for their parents’ bad decisions. That child did not ask to die. The adults in his life willed that he die because of their egregiously misinformed theology. Will they reform when someone their child infected dies? Their freedom does not give them license to kill because of their stupidity.
The exemption must be removed.