GA Gov Bans COVID Vaccine Passports in State: 'We Do Not Support That'
Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp banned any requirement for COVID-19 vaccine passports to enter the state via executive order on Tuesday.
The order also prohibits state agencies and properties and state service providers from requiring such a passport. In addition, it bans the use of data from the Georgia Registry of Immunization Transactions and Services from being used in a COVID-19 passport program, according to Fox News.
Kemp told Fox that he trusts Georgians to make their own choice.
“There’s a lot of concern out there that people are going to be forced to do something with their own medical decisions,” he said. “We do not support that.”
In recent months, a number of GOP governors have made a point to aggressively stave off the abhorrently anti-freedom concept of a vaccine passport.
This should be a no-brainer for anyone with even a cursory understanding of civil liberties — but of course, how many people even grasp these concepts anymore?
Millions of Americans are indeed concerned about a broad range of issues when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccination, such as the efficacy and safety of inoculation. Furthermore, how many red-blooded patriots out there refuse to take the shot on the sheer principle that they won’t be told what to do by the federal government’s medical establishment?
And since this is America, every single one of us, from the skeptical to the downright stubborn, still has the right to adhere to personal conscience and make this decision for ourselves.
End of story.
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It doesn’t matter whether you’re the crunchiest anti-vaccine hippie in the world or you think we should use barcodes to identify the vaccinated; the founding philosophy of this constitutional republic is predicated on your right to adhere to your own private moral conscience, and elected officials are sworn to uphold this right.
It is not just the responsibility of the leaders in our constitutional republic to refrain from actively violating their citizens’ rights; it is their role to see fit that other leaders are also prevented from doing so.
“I thought it was important for state government to signal, look, we’re not going to have vaccine passports,” Kemp told Fox.
Like many conservatives, the governor is 100 percent pro-vaccine and argued for a more positive approach to convincing Georgians to get the jab.
“People know what to do. We’re going to continue to encourage them to get the vaccine,” he said, also noting that while he’s been “pushing” the vaccine and has been vaccinated himself, “Forcing people to do something is not going to work. You need to get them to buy into what you’re selling or what your solutions are.”
Kemp also touted Georgia’s booming post-COVID economy and its appeal to citizens of states with more stringent pandemic mandates.
“You look at the numbers, for the first time in 20 or 30 years you’ve got more people moving out of California than moving in. People are flocking to places like Georgia, Florida, Tennessee,” he said. “Our economy is smoking right now. Our issue is we need more people in the workforce in all different sectors.”
Republican governors like Kemp, Florida’s conservative superstar Ron DeSantis, and Texas’ Greg Abbott are making sensible decisions about reopening that fly in the face of the nation’s irrational pandemic addicts, and their states are all doing great right now as a result.
Any honest American leader would do right to follow their lead and put an end to this madness. Vaccine passports must never be a thing if we have any hope at all of moving forward as a free nation under our Constitution as it is written.
And it is high time we move forward from this madness indeed.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
