mask
Photograph ©2020 by Brian Cohen.
Brian Cohen·
Health and EnvironmentNews
··14 Comments·3 min read

Wearing Face Masks To Be Banned Here

Violators can face jail time and a fine of $1,000.00.

The act of wearing face masks is to be banned here in a certain county in the United States; and anyone who is 16 years of age or older who is found in violation of the law can face up to a year of jail time — as well as a fine of $1,000.00.

Wearing Face Masks To Be Banned Here

The county is Nassau County on Long Island in the state of New York. Twelve members of the Nassau County Legislature voted to pass a ban that criminalizes the wearing of face coverings in public spaces — with minimal exceptions for health and religious purposes which have not been clearly defined at the time this article was written — while seven members abstained from voting.

Law enforcement officers will decide if a covering for the face is being worn for a legitimate purpose. Opponents of the controversial bill — which is known as the Mask Transparency Act — claim that could lead to discrimination against people with darker skin than Caucasian people.

The goal of the Mask Transparency Act is supposedly to prevent criminals from concealing their identities when taking part in violent protests — although it may also be intended to address the increase in the number of people on Long Island who have tested positive for the Novel Coronavirus recently.

The bill is expected to be signed by Bruce Blakeman, who is the county executive of Nassau County. No definitive date has been set at the time this article was written as to when the Mask Transparency Act will be in effect; but according to an official document known only as Clerk Item Number 142-24 — as the bill was not given a proposed local law number — “This law shall take effect immediately after becoming a law”.

Mask
Photograph ©2020 by Brian Cohen.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New York responded with a scathing official statement from Susan Gottehrer, who is its regional director:

“Nassau County’s mask ban is a dangerous misuse of the law to score political points and target protestors. Barring people who speak out from protecting themselves and their identities puts their health and well-being in danger, particularly people with disabilities, people of color, and those with unpopular views.

“Masks protect people who express political opinions that are unpopular. Making anonymous protest illegal chills political action and is ripe for selective enforcement, leading to doxxing, surveillance, and retaliation against protesters.

“Banning face masks also puts Nassau County residents’ health at risk. With COVID-19 on the rise across Long Island, face coverings are critical to protecting the health of an individual, their family, and their community. Criminalizing masks forces those with disabilities or medical conditions, as well as their families and loved ones, to have to decide whether to segregate themselves from public life or endanger their health and even lives. The ban’s so-called health and religious exceptions are entirely inadequate: Nassau County police officers are not health professionals or religious experts capable of deciding who needs a mask and who doesn’t.

“Concerns that masks disguise criminal activity must not be answered by banning anonymous protest. Police should respond to a person’s actions, not their attire.

See also

“No Long Islander should be sent to jail for trying to protect themself or their community.”

Final Boarding Call

Mask
Photograph ©2020 by Brian Cohen.

I have repeatedly stated in numerous articles here at The Gate With Brian Cohen that I am vehemently opposed to being forced to wear masks or other face coverings — but I am also equally against criminalizing anyone who wishes or needs to wear one. This is not a matter in which any form of government should be involved.

My thoughts are that banning masks and coverings for faces is asinine and ridiculous at best. This was a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars — as well as a waste of time for members of the Nassau County Legislature, as I cannot imagine any productive outcome of enacting such a law…

…so if you are traveling to New York and want to see a concert at Westbury Music Fair, go fishing at Oyster Bay, soak up some sun rays at Jones Beach, or catch a horse race at Belmont Park in Elmont while wearing a covering for your face, keep the Mask Transparency Act of Nassau County in mind…

All photographs ©2020 by Brian Cohen.

Related

14 Comments

  1. If an airline bans masks, I am not flying on that airline. I wear a mask on all planes, city busses, and the airport. I also wear a mask in the grocery store because I am not trying to land a hot date. I also wear a mask if I am pulling weeds to avoid hay fever and a runny nose. I don’t wear a mask while driving or in my house.

    I know someone that just got back from London. They traveled like the pandemic never existed. They got Covid. They just finished cancer chemotherapy and is nearly 80 years old. In other words, high risk.

    If the law is interpreted as the plain language states, which “with the intent to conceal the identity of the wearer”, and enforced this way, the law is fine. Demonstrating intent would be if you robbed someone or robbed a bank.

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  2. For years New York banned the wearing of masks at protests to make sure that KKK members couldn’t intimidate black people with impunity and force them to show their faces . . . of course the cowards stopped trying to intimidate black people. Unfortunately that law was rescinded during Covid, which has given Neo-Nazis the opportunity to intimidate Jews with antisemitic threats and violence while hiding their faces. This law will hopefully protect Jews the same way that the original law protected blacks, and claims of fear of disease are an absurd pretense.

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  3. Derek clearly suffers from mental illness. Can we please stop giving these sad people a voice which they don’t deserve. Masks have become the signal of someone suffering from mental illness. Let’s get them the help they need and stop humoring them.

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    1. If that’s the case, 100% of surgeons are crazy because they wear masks during surgery.

      In Japan before the pandemic, masks were common, particularly in the winter.

      It is lunacy to be like Willy and be opposed to anyone wearing masks. Those same people pressure college kids to drink and date rape to be cool, just like they try to make bare face be cool.

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    2. Complete nonsense to think that masks have no use for health purposes.

      If you think they are useless, go see how you live after doing 20 years of asbestos removal without a mask. Or go do 8 hours of mask-free daily indoor rock sculpting or coal mining with power tools for 10 years straight and then tell us if you regret not having used masks.

      Reply

      1. When was the last time Mak has been in NY and seen in-person with his own unaided eyes an actual white supremacist neo-Nazi while in NY? While Long Island has its equivalent of the UK’s “burn the mosques and the illegals/migrants/asylum-seekers hotels down” crowd, it has far fewer visible neo-Nazis than comparably dense parts of Europe and even in some of the places in the US where “covid is a hoax” nuts and supporters of “stop the steal” nonsense had been disproportionately prevalent in 2020 and 2021.

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  4. Blakeman’s county already rips me off with high property taxes, and now he wants to regulate how people choose to dress up in public and force people to rip off wear or face harassment and worse from law enforcement personnel? He should go pound sand.

    Free people should not be required to have to disclose or discuss their religious, cultural or political affiliations or personal medical concerns with police officers in order to wear what they want to wear on their own body.

    The government should get out of meddling with what people are allowed to wear or not wear on their bodies while out and about on the public streets and in other public spaces open to the general public.

    If tomorrow you feel like I you want to be like an ultra-orthodox vegan Jain for a day and wear a nose and mouth covering mask or want to go biking, walking or running in a way to reduce the number of bugs getting into the mouth and nostrils, in a free country you should be able to do that without nosy busy-bodies trying to regulate your bodies and what is on them.

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  5. Also, as we keep going down the road of an electronic super-surveillance state even more dystopian than what Orwell’s 1984 had covered, there is a growing need for people to disrupt biometric tracking for fundamental privacy reasons. In the absence of privacy, all your other rights will be compromised in the face of those with the power, money and knowledge to exploit the lack of privacy — or the cracking of the privacy — to coerce and intimidate the general public and to target law-abiding individuals who rub the wrong people the wrong way.

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  6. @GUWonder Writing this from New York City and can report that it is full of Neo-Nazis. But not the “white supremecist” kind of Neo-Nazi. Today’s Neo-Nazis who torment Jews cast themselves as global justice crusaders and cloak their antisemitic violence and intimidation as “anti-Zionist.” Masks allow them to do this with impunity, and that should be taken away from them as it was from the Ku Klux Klan before them.

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    1. Mak back to using the Bill Clinton Dictionary of the English Language: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”? Seems so.

      Words have definitions that matter, and Nazis and neo-Nazis are white supremacists by definition. But if Mak wants to tell the ADL and SPLC that Nazis and neo-Nazis are sub-Saharan African supremacists or Roma supremacists, it would seem to be in character for Mak.

      Reply

  7. @GuWonder Worth adding that to the extent surgeons still wear masks in surgical theaters or elsewhere, it’s not to prevent the transmission of airborne virii. Surgeons know that fabric surgical masks are completely ineffective for that, and are only worn to prevent much larger bacteria of oropharyngeal and nasopharyngeal origin from being transmitted into an open wound – airborne virii slip right through and around the most tightly woven fabric and are completely worthless to stop the transmission of covid.

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  9. Brian, you know perfectly well this ordinance was passed to prevent the dangerous Jew-hating pro-Hammas masked protesters from assuming anonymity while they intimidate and Harris Jews. Being masked is why the NYC DA Alvin Bragg let virtually all of the Columbia Pro-Hammas protestors, including those who kidnapped some Columbia U janitors, walk Scott free. That’s why the law exists. No difference than laws that banned the KKK from wearing white sheets.

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  10. Freedom of speech is a wonderful right. And should be utilized when one sees fit. That said, if someone feels strongly enough to protest, they should be willing and required to show their face.

    Reply

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