The White House Responds
[guest post by Dana]
Not surprisingly, in response to the Supreme Court decision which Patterico posted about this morning, the White House is planning to push for congressional action to provide contraception coverage:
“We will work with Congress to make sure any women affect by this decision are not denied access to contraceptive services,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
“There is a problem being exposed that a group of women of an indeterminate size no longer have access to free contraception because of religious views, not their own religious views, but their bosses religious views,” Earnest said. “We disagree and the constitutional lawyer in the oval office disagrees.”
Earnest emphasized that the president supports religious liberty and provided exemptions for churches and religious nonprofits.
Of course the ruling is driving feminists a bit nuts:
Glad for all the people retweeting misogynists, but so sad at how many people hate women and want to force unwanted pregnancy on them.
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) June 30, 2014
Maybe women should organize a safe-sex fuck-in at every Hobby Lobby across the country. In the glitter aisle. JUST A THOUGHT.
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) June 30, 2014
SCOTUS took an outrageous step against women's rights, setting a dangerous precedent that permits corporations to choose which laws to obey.
— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) June 30, 2014
You can also check out #NotMyBossBusiness
–Dana
It’s amazing, the skill liberals like Amanda Marcotte have at misinterpreting reality.
“The government has to steal from you to pay me to wear a Dalkon shield when I boink or else you are raping me.” Clueless.
CrustyB (69f730) — 6/30/2014 @ 10:50 amThis decision doesn’t mean those women can’t get contraceptives. It just means that their employers won’t pay for it.
Steven Den Beste (99cfa1) — 6/30/2014 @ 10:55 amthey ‘remove all doubt’ at light speed.
narciso (3fec35) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:03 amBut….but….SDB, they only make 71¢ of what men do, and companies don’t pay for condoms…yet!
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:06 amIs Jessica Valenti good-looking at all and, if so, can I get on her notifications list?
nk (dbc370) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:06 amWe are ALL Sandra FLUKED!
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:08 amForget the good-looking if Hobby Lobby provides paper bags.
nk (dbc370) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:08 amLOL at the hysteria.
Worse yet how absolutely mangled the logic is.
Rodney King's Spirit (eb0bf8) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:09 amI look at the tide
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:12 amand I notice it’s turning
while Fluke gently weeps
“women of an indeterminate size”
That’s only because they lie about their weight, Earnest.
nk (dbc370) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:13 amnk, has Jessica gotten a contributor to ‘pop’ for the condoms?
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:13 amSteven Den Beste, it doesn’t even mean that employers as a class won’t pay for it, just it won’t be paid for by the specific group of employers who are private, closely held corporations owned by people with strong religious objections. This was a really, really narrow decision.
That said: “we disagree with the court’s interpretation of statute and will work with Congress to change the statute” strikes me as being the correct response from an administration that doesn’t like this outcome.
aphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:13 am“SCOTUS took an outrageous step against women’s rights, setting a dangerous precedent that permits corporations to choose which laws to obey.” – Madame Pelosi is mostly indignant at the mere idea of anyone else enjoying Democrat party prerogatives !
Alastor (2e7f9f) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:15 amYeah, ‘will work with Congress’ from an Administration that studiously ignores Congress and denigrates it at every opportunity.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:16 amWorse yet how absolutely mangled the logic is.
It’s shamefully manipulative and passive-aggressive whinging. Once again, they embarrass theselves by epitomizing the stereotypical weaker sex, but of course lack the necessary self-awareness to see it.
Dana (fe2228) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:17 ampelosi is upset because obama is not the only one who who can decide which laws to ignore. But, Hobby Lobby can now do it legally.
Jim (dc5067) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:18 am“women of an indeterminate size”
That’s only because they lie about their weight, Earnest.
Okay, this made me laugh out loud, nk. So true, too.
Dana (fe2228) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:19 amAlastor: the thing is, I don’t see any *principle* which limits the decision to private, closely-held corporations, or which limits the decision to contraceptives. *Maybe* the ease of identifying the owners, but you could get around that by making such decisions at shareholder meetings.
I am aware that the majority opinion explicitly calls out certain things (racial discrimination, vaccines) as being outside the scope of the decision.
But I don’t see any limiting factor on the RFRA reasoning which would prevent its application to those cases.
So … Pelosi, et al, are overreacting. But there’s a kernel of truth: the reasoning implies the result they’re afraid of, and there’s no obvious limiting factor provided by the majority.
aphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:22 amI’m guessing nothing will come of the WH talk.
However, I’m wondering if saying Dems want to repeal the RFRA might be a winning campaign soundbite. (Note: as far as I can tell, it’s SOME Dems.)
Ibidem (3e710c) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:22 amEarnest is no Ernest, though he is a clown.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:26 amWomen of Indeterminate Size would be a good name for a band.
Anachronda (4ea998) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:28 amI understand that Harry Reid tweeted something about it’s time that 5 men should not be making decisions for women–does that mean all male senators are going to abstain on issues involving women?
rochf (f3fbb0) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:28 amaphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:22 am
Wouldn’t vaccines be against the teachings of some religions (e.i.: Jehovah’s Witnesses)?
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:31 amDyslexia Alert…..23…(i.e. v. e.i.)
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:32 amwhat a Mondo world
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:32 amthese Fu*k-wits and their Fu*k-ins
De-evolution
Askeptic – yes, that’s my point.
The majority opinion explicitly says it’s not addressing the vaccine case in a way that implies the vaccine case would come out differently, but there’s no rationale for *why*, which (a) makes me think that the majority opinion is the result of the majority lying to itself, and (b) makes me much more sympathetic to the frightened rantings of those who are opposed to the outcome.
aphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:36 amI have read the counter argument that if Hobby Lobby is ruled in favor of, what is to stop the Christian Scientist owned business from refusing to cover any health benefits as well as JW’s blood transfusions. But that is not what the women above are afraid of happening. Not really.
Dana (fe2228) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:39 am26- The underlying problem is that government has intruded too far into our private spheres, and has taken on the trappings of royalty.
Are we Citizens of a Republic, or Subjects of a King?
Zapata was right.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:47 amObama and company know that nothing like this is going to pass Congress, although maybe what – they’re looking to give people a rebate?
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:47 amCould Iran lose access to the Internet? (or its oqwn websites anyway)
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/182343
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:48 amwhich (a) makes me think that the majority opinion is the result of the majority lying to itself, and (b) makes me much more sympathetic to the frightened rantings of those who are opposed to the outcome.
So fear actually is behind your sympathizing with the gimme-gimme, self-entitlement crowd? I guess that means cheap fright should be added to cheap compassion as the two major sentiments undergirding the left.
As a test of such fear and compassion, liberals should be packed up and moved to the city of Detroit, where their ideology and policymaking have been ascendant for over 50 years.
Mark (fdb0fc) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:53 amHas anyone told the Islamic suicide bombers about Pelosi’s opinion. She wants to force homosexuality and contraceptives on the House of Islam. If I were a Muslim, and believed in jihad, I’d put her – and those four Supreme Court Justices – way up at the top of their “To Be Blown Up” list.
Mike Giles (930031) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:02 pmThe amount of outright mendoucheity I have read today is extraordinary.
JD (191f33) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:04 pmNow watching Obama blame everything/everybody but himself for the disaster at the border he facilitated… The Narcissistic Moron.
Colonel Haiku (aa8ee9) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:19 pmPetulant, narcissistic, finger-pointing Obama… #LikeABoss
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:25 pmHmmm. Maybe if Hobby Lobby was owned by Muslims…do you think the progressives would act this way?
Honestly, I don’t understand all the heated rhetoric. If you don’t like the health care benefits for a given company…um…get a job elsewhere. There are lots of people working at jobs with terrible benefits. You hang in there until you find something better.
Nor is this, as i have read on Twitter and Facebook, some kind of war on anyone. The owners of a business get to make some of their own decisions. If Hobby Lobby said that they didn’t want to hire African-Americans, I could understand all the thunder and lightning. This is silly…but you watch: the administration that hires very few women and pays them less than men will succeed in creating more #waronwomen histrionics. And sloganeering low information voters will eat it up.
Truth is, this is more “Government-As-Sugar-Daddy” nonsense.
Some of the most expensive things in life are “free.” Freedom time security equals a constant. Always.
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:26 pmal-Hobbilobbi
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:29 pmrevoltin’ development
and bang! zoom! Simon
Zippy just declared war on strawmen. I predict genocide.
Hadoop (f7d5ba) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:32 pmMark, your comment @31 does not seem to engage with my actual point: I don’t see an ideologically consistent rationale by which this opinion is limited so as to not allow the closely held company owned by Jehovah’s Witnesses to refuse to pay for any health insurance which covers treatments that involve blood transfusions.
The court says it doesn’t apply, but – speaking as a lawyer who is familiar with how courts argue by analogy from precedent – I don’t see what rationale can be used to draw the distinction.
So, for me, either the court is declaring a broad rule favoring religious refusal, or it is saying that contraceptives are somehow different without explaining why.
I dislike the decision for those reasons.
I’m not particularly outraged; the Supreme Court regularly makes doctrinally incoherent decisions and then fails to provide the appeals courts with good guidance on how to interpret them, and this is no worse than, say, the patent law case from last week.
aphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:39 pmTiger Beat, Chicago 2001 NPR interview, when he was still out of the socialist closet.
They’re not misinterpreting reality. They know perfectly well that if they told you this is about breaking free fro the constraints contained in the Constitution they’d never get away with it. So instead it has to be about saving women’s lives, with the volue turned up to eleventy.
But shredding the Constitution has been Obama’s goal, as well as the left’s in general, for his entire life; it still is.
So they invent new “positive” rights that they know aren’t in the Constitution. In fat they conflict with what’s in the Constitution; that’s the point. And if they insist long enough and loudly enough, and Obama an pack the courts fast enough, eventually they’ll get there.
If they an get people to say the physically impossible is possible, things like “Heather has two mommies” and “Bradley Manning is now a girl named Chelsea because ‘she’ says so,” then eventually they an browbeat people into saying and believing other equally ridiculous things. Such as rights exist in he Constitution that are no where to be found in the text, these rights contradict what is actually written in black and white which now either really don’t exist at all or are trumped by the newly invented “positive” rights.
You an still exercise your freedom of religion and follow your conscience on matters of contraception, abortion, and sterilization. For now. Just like he Boy Scouts could exercise their right of freedom of association for a while longer after the SCOTUS ruled in their favor. And until he gaystapo went after their corporate sponsors, got them kicked out of public facilities, and had them labeled a hate group.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/21/california-proposes-to-ban-judges-affiliated-with-the-boy-scouts-because-the-group-doesnt-allow-gay-troop-leaders/
You’ll be able to practice your freedom of religion the way Brendan Eich could participate in he political process.
I know these leftists seem ridiculous now, but wait a bit.
Steve57 (874187) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:40 pmSimon Jester – yeah, I agree a lot of the rhetoric is bizarrely over the top. I had to deliberately restrain myself from getting into an argument with a friend of a friend who was ranting about how this decision was the result of open misogyny; he clearly hadn’t even *read* the opinion.
That said, I have an issue with this:
> If you don’t like the health care benefits for a given company…um…get a job elsewhere.
I’m not convinced that’s possible, in a large number of cases.
aphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:40 pman Obama first
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:41 pmanal-rectal disorder
his head up own ass
Even better: if you don’t want your employer making health care decisions for you, you shouldn’t ask your employer to foot the bill for them.
Chuck Bartowski (11fb31) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:46 pmSome of you folks know a lot more about this than me, but isn’t there something about the state can limit freedom if/only if there is an overwhelming societal interest, like you don’t get to kill people as a sacrifice because you say your religion tells you to,
and so this court decision basically said that the state’s interest in compelling someone to pay for a benefit never before guaranteed is not great enough to overrule a person religious beliefs?
It does put into view a revisit of bakers and wedding cakes for SS couples, whether the state has a compelling interest to make a baker offer such services.
BTW, I heard the baker decided to quit baking rather than comply. Anyone know if that is true or just a story?
In some ways it is simply a very childish and self-centered view, I want to force you to do what I want, but I don’t have to do anything that I don’t want to.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:49 pmSteve57 (874187) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:40 pm
I still think that the argument can be made that with views like that expressed by Obama, it is logically of necessity contradictory for him to take an oath to uphold the Constitution as it is, unless you can trust the word of the man to do what he in fact disagrees with.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:53 pm> and so this court decision basically said that the state’s interest in compelling someone to pay for a benefit never before guaranteed is not great enough to overrule a person religious beliefs?
No.
This wasn’t a *constitutional* decision. It was a decision interpreting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The court *assumed* the presence of a compelling state interest in paying for this benefit, but said that *even if there’s a compelling state interest*, it has to be carried out in the least intrusive way possible, and that in this case there were other, less intrusive ways, of ensuring that this benefit was covered without trampling on Hobby Lobby’s owner’s religious freedoms.
aphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 12:54 pmIt’s not your Father’s America any longer.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:09 pmThanks aphrael.
I’m guessing that when you wrote *constitutional* you were noting that while it was not a Constitutional decision per se, it was a decision about the RFRA which it seems to me is an attempt to clarify what is understood as religious freedom in the Constitution/Bill of Rights.
And I guess what I was trying to say is what you said regarding “the least intrusive way possible”.
BTW, I stumbled upon an answer to my query. The baker is still baking, just no longer baking wedding cakes for anybody.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:13 pmhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenhayward/2014/06/30/persecution-and-the-art-of-baking-or-how-civil-rights-became-corrupt/
In one way a trivial price to pay compared to being beheaded in Syria or Iraq for being Christian, but still.
The article makes the point (like with Roe) that the SCOTUS likes to make decisions of law in ways which try to avoid making moral judgments. I guess that would work in a universe that is by nature amoral, but I would propose that the failure of such action to result in satisfying results hints that we do not live in an amoral universe after all.
You’re welcome, MD in Philly. 🙂
The court is very clear that it thinks Congress is *not* simply trying to clarify the first amendment, but that it is creating a seperate set of rules which favor religious practice more than traditional first amendment jurisprudence would. That is to say, there are laws which would be constitutional under the first amendment which would not be legal under the RFRA, and there are laws which would be legal under the RFRA which would not be constitutional.
aphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:14 pmAh, reading Amanda Marcotte would make one think there is a scourge of immaculate conceptions washing over the country!
DejectedHead (a094a6) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:24 pmaphrael–It may help you navigate this discussion if you consider that this whole business of what is, and what is not covered–or what should or should not be covered by employers’ health plans–and what exemptions and exceptions are being made or asked for on a whole host of things–is a direct result of Obamacare (which most of us here hate, becsause of goverment inserting itself into private medical insurance where we absolutely believe it has no business.) Without Obamacare we would not be having this conversation and the Supreme Court of the land would not be issuing a ruling about birth control today.
I’ve had (emphasis on HAD) excellent health insurance provided by three employers over my working life. This included insurance during my young and most fertile years when I used birth control because we were not ready to start a family yet. I paid for those prescriptions myself and it never in a million years would have occurred to me that my employer was responsible for providing them for free. I am not prone to sharing such personal information on the internet. But I am, here, because I hope it may help some people understand and think about how truly ludicrous it is for women in the 21st century to expect and demand readily and easily available birth control pills from their employer’s insurer. The absurd claims and hysteria are beyond the pale. Nobody’s going to take away their choice or their access to the BC–it’s just that they maybe may have to foot the bill themselves or find a different job with coverage they like better!
elissa (cbbaf1) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:28 pmthere are laws which would be legal under the RFRA which would not be constitutional.
Well, I’m not a lawyer, and even if I was, my view of the law would be different from that of others. I do not understand how the copied sentence makes sense, unless you are saying that under RFRA there are things being justified that shouldn’t be,
or, that under RFRA alone some things could be done that can’t be because of Constitutional limitations.
I’m thinking that there is a difference of opinion on this, rather than my being wrong. I’m guessing that there are those who favor a “robust understanding” of freedom of religion that do not think the RFRA created a new set of rules at all, hence the term “Restoration“, meaning putting back in something that was there but then lost,
but there are others who would contend that the first Amendment didn’t mean what some think it means, just like some would contend that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with individual rights.
But then again, I’m not a lawyer.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:33 pmElissa, I understand the backstory. I don’t actually have any objection to this outcome *in this specific case*.
What’s bothering me is I don’t understand the legal rationale under which the infringement of the religious liberty of Hobby Lobby’s owners is *worse* than the infringement of the religious liberty of the Jehovah’s Witness business owner down the street who doesn’t want to pay for insurance that covers blood transfusions.
The majority opinion implies that there is such a rationale, but doesn’t explain it, and I am extremely, extremely skeptical that such a rationale can be developed on any basis other than “because we say so.”
aphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:35 pm> that under RFRA alone some things could be done that can’t be because of Constitutional limitations.
This is what i’m saying, yes.
> I’m guessing that there are those who favor a “robust understanding” of freedom of religion that do not think the RFRA created a new set of rules at all,
So part of the discussion in the majority opinion is whether the RFRA simply restored the rules which existed in Supreme Court interpretations of the first amendment before _Smith_ or created a different set of rules that favored religion more than the Supreme Court had in its pre-Smith decisions. The majority said it does the latter.
aphrael (e777bc) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:36 pmAlito, on the possibility of a broader definition of the decision:
This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to hold that all insurance-coverage mandates, e.g. for vaccinations or blood transfusions, must necessarily fall if they conflict with an employer’s religious beliefs.
Dana (fe2228) — 6/30/2014 @ 2:03 pmMD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:13 pm
They (SCOTUS) wish to appear Solomonic, but can’t decide what to do with all the baby halves.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 2:15 pmLike a lot of things that fall from SCOTUS decisions, they will be decided on a case by case basis, because the Court was unable to gather the gumption to throw the entire thing out as an unconstitutional overreach of government – even though many of us know it is.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 2:19 pmDana – sure. He said it. But it contradicts the rationale he used, and he provides no actual *reasoning* other than “because I said so” for why it wouldn’t apply in those cases.
aphrael (c5786e) — 6/30/2014 @ 2:25 pmSimon, narratives have little to do with the truth, the specter of Cardinal Fang, or the Handmaid’s Tale, is the template they are going for,
narciso (3fec35) — 6/30/2014 @ 2:28 pmNo, the Supreme Court struck a blow against unequal, privileged treatment of a certain class of citizens.
Patricia (5fc097) — 6/30/2014 @ 2:55 pm‘freedom is slavery’ and the converse,
narciso (3fec35) — 6/30/2014 @ 3:35 pmThis case is being somewhat misrepresented. It wasn’t really about contraceptives or birth control. Actually it was an abortion case. If you’re surprised to hear that, you’re in good company. So was the Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, when Chief Justice Roberts pointed out what kind of case he was in fact arguing. Apparently until Roberts told him the Solicitor General didn’t know.
http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/374279/hobby-lobby-abortion-case-matthew-j-franck
A very prescient article from March.
I doubt anyone could claim that being forced to procure or participate in an abortion isn’t a substantial burden on religious liberty.
We could get into a discussion of what constitutes an abortion, but frankly the religious side has the better argument than the government from the standpoint of science. Geneticists have established that life begins at conception. At conception all he genetic material that will determine eery thing about the person is present. The zygote is the earliest developmental stage of a unique human being.
The government, perhaps taking its lead from The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), arbitrarily defines abortion as a procedure that terminates a pregnancy, and arbitrarily defines pregnancy a beginning at implantation. Their definition is taken from the National Library of Medicine
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/abortion.html
But if anyone objects to my use of the term arbitrary, consider this. Women an and do get their pregnancies terminated at Catholic hospitals. Because terminating the pregnancy isn’t he mortal sin and grave evil. That would involve terminating the life. Which, again, begins a conception. Catholic hospitals will terminate a difficult pregnancy if he fetus puts significant stress on he mother after it reaches viability. A which point they’ll care for the premature baby as well as he mother.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, it is true that when the NIH gets around to describing specific abortion procedures it is clear they involve ending both the pregnancy and the life. But ending the life is not part of he definition the government uses. This is why I said the government was following ACOG’s lead; ACOG altered its definition of abortion for purely political purposes.
The religious definition is no vague like the government’s. Catholics simply define abortion as any intentional destruction of the product of human conception, whether before or after implantation. ost Christian denominations define abortion similarly. This is why his wasn’t a ase concerning contraceptives. The owners of Hobby Lobby aren’t Catholics. They actually had no religious objections to providing contraceptives. In fact I believe they do. Its he misleadingly named “emergency contraceptives”(and no doubt IUDs) which can also prevent implantation after conception that they objected to. Verrilli didn’t understand that. Neither did Kennedy at first, until Roberts pointed it out.
Once Roberts did that, this result was virtually assured.
Steve57 (874187) — 6/30/2014 @ 3:49 pm“there are laws which would be legal under the RFRA which would not be constitutional.”
52. MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/30/2014 @ 1:33 pm
or, that under RFRA alone some things could be done that can’t be because of Constitutional limitations.
That’s the only thing that sentence can mean. (But that you can’t say one is stricter than the other, because each – the RFRA and the constitution – has different leniencies and stringencies.
The RFRA may be stricter than the constitution, but maybe only covers federal laws enacted by Congress. Is that it?
Sammy Finkelman (b7774f) — 6/30/2014 @ 3:58 pmJeffrey Toobin, was specially obtuse, today.
narciso (3fec35) — 6/30/2014 @ 4:06 pmIf Amanda is so interested in avoiding unwanted pregnancies, maybe she should be advocating abstinence from the one act that leads to pregnancy.
tops116 (0ba383) — 6/30/2014 @ 4:19 pmSteve57,
Yep. And that explains the strident response from the feminists. They knew what was at stake.
Further,
Dana (4dbf62) — 6/30/2014 @ 5:13 pmWell, I’d kinda like to see Jessica arrested for public indecency. Perp walk her ass.
mojo (00b01f) — 6/30/2014 @ 5:15 pmAs a point of fact, I wonder whether JWs object to other people taking blood transfusions. If they don’t then that example is moot. But indeed, if they do think it wrong then it should shock the conscience to force one to provide such coverage. And if there exist people who think it’s blasphemy for anyone to try to heal a sickness that God has willed, then it should shock the conscience to force one of them to provide health insurance at all. Without providing insurance they’ll presumably have to pay people more than they would otherwise do, and employees who don’t share their employer’s beliefs can use some of that money to buy insurance. Similarly if a JW provides his workers with insurance that doesn’t cover blood, then a worker who worries about the possibility that he might one day need blood would be concerned about working there, and would want extra money to agree to this defective plan, and he can then use that money to buy supplemental insurance. Perhaps the employees could pool their money to self-insure for blood. But this should be a no-brainer. Forcing people to do something that their conscience tells them is wrong, is wrong.
Milhouse (b95258) — 6/30/2014 @ 5:24 pmThe point was made in briefs that Congress could have exempted the ACA from the RFRA by inserting a simple sentence, but did not. Given the hair’s breadth it passed by, and the last votes coming from Blue Dog Dems who disliked abortion, and the contraception we are speaking of in Hobby Lobby is of the abortifacient kind, one expects that it was not an oversight. If they could have put it in and passed, they would have.
So there’s not really a leg to stand on in the “Congress didn’t mean that” argument. They knew this would happen, but told themselves they’d win in court.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 6/30/2014 @ 5:25 pmJust how many employers do you think object to providing other people with contraception?
Milhouse (b95258) — 6/30/2014 @ 5:27 pmNo, because RFRA doesn’t apply to the states. If the baker had been sued under a federal law, then she would indeed be excused from compliance because of RFRA, unless Congress had explicitly said otherwise.
Milhouse (b95258) — 6/30/2014 @ 5:31 pmAs for there not being a limiting principle for keeping this to closely held corporations or family businesses, I would disagree. While there isn’t a bright line, it is at least clearer that where you can put a cross.
As the ownership of a company diversifies, the idea that the company has a moral position diminishes, as that can only come from a like-minded set of people who are closely identified with the company.
The Duck Dynasty Company (or whatever they call themselves) would be on one side, and Ford Motor — even though it is controlled by the Ford family — would be on the other, as the Fords are not all of one mind, there are millions of other investors, and the company’s own diversity makes the family’s image and the company’s quite distinct.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 6/30/2014 @ 5:33 pmExactly. The Supreme Court made a decision that the first amendment was less extensive than a lot of people thought it was, including a majority in Congress. So Congress passed RFRA, intending it to be a rebuke to the Supreme Court, and to provide guidance to the courts that they should interpret the amendment more broadly. Thus it was intended to apply to the states as well. The Supreme Court said “hey, you can’t do that. We interpret the constitution, not you. You can make laws all you like, but you can’t pretend they’re in the constitution. Only we can do that.” So it struck down RFRA as applied to the states, but of course Congress can restrict its own laws any way it likes.
Milhouse (b95258) — 6/30/2014 @ 5:40 pmbut of course Congress can restrict its own laws any way it likes.
Which implies that if it doesn’t exempt a given statute, it intended those restrictions to apply there, too.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 6/30/2014 @ 5:58 pm@Millhouse
Gil (277c15) — 6/30/2014 @ 6:14 pmYou said that forcing someone to do something they think is wrong is wrong. That is not so. There used to be (and still are) people who thought desegregation was wrong. Is it wrong to force a devout Christian scientist to take kids to hospitals or a administer drugs?
I’m not all up in arms hysterically about this. But it is disturbing. We’ve allowed Iron Age rationale to affect (however moderately) some peoples health care. And that is a dangerous precedent. What’s more as has been previously pointed out, there is no reasoning presented as to why it is valid only for birth control and not more serious procedures such as vaccines etc.
Nobody’s going to keep you from getting a vaccine. Hell, they can’t keep you from getting AIDS if you want it. You just can’t make your employer pay for it. You can make the taxpayers pay for it under this ruling.
nk (dbc370) — 6/30/2014 @ 6:21 pmthe simple odds would dictate he would get something right, but no,
narciso (3fec35) — 6/30/2014 @ 6:22 pmGil, why lie? The decision affects no one’s access to birth control. No one.
SPQR (c4e119) — 6/30/2014 @ 6:28 pmIt’s a question of participation. Certain things religious people can’t participate in even indirectly. In other things religious people just can’t take direct part in.
Most Christians believe abortion is a grave evil because it always involves the taking of an innocent life. So they can’t participate in or help procure them even indirectly; that would be cooperation with evil. No devoutly Christian doctor or nurse could participate in an abortion procedure in any way (a Catholic would be automatically excommunicated). Presumably that would include a Jehovah’s Witness doctor or nurse.
http://www.religionfacts.com/jehovahs_witnesses/ethics.htm#10
Catholics obviously extend the prohibition to contraceptives because it’s church teaching that the unborn is not the enemy, so we can’t treat it like he enemy. We have to be open to life. Again, like abortion the act itself is inherently wrong.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Biblical prohibitions against consuming blood applies to ingesting blood by any means, including by transfusion. Most other Christians and Jews believe they only apply to consuming it as food.
But there is nothing inherently evil or wrong about blood, as is the case with abortion (and as Catholics and I’m sure other denominations believe about contraceptives). Indeed, it’s just the opposite.
http://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/jehovahs-witnesses-why-no-blood-transfusions/
There is nothing in those verses prohibiting anyone from procuring blood. Nor doing so for anyone else. Just about not consuming it directly ourselves. In fact Jehovah’s Witnesses who are doctors, nurses, lab technicians, etc., routinely work with blood. They do procure blood by drawing it, they test it for diseases, all that. I’m not a 100% sure, but I believe it’s a matter of individual conscience whether a Jehovah’s Witness can participate in a blood transfusion for someone who isn’t a Jehovah’s Witness. I know they can’t order one, but I’m reasonably sure they can assist in one. So a Jehovah’s Witness’ strictures against transfusions aren’t comparable to absolute prohibitions against procuring or participating in an abortion.
You know, the RFRA has been around for over 20 years. If Jehovah’s Witnesses had a problem with providing their employees with health insurance that covered blood transfusions we would have heard from them by now. Blood transfusions, unlike the new requirement to provide birth control and abortifacients on the policy, have been pretty standard items in health insurance overage. If it were going to be an issue it should have been one back during Clinton’s first term when he signed the RFRA into law. That’s the weakness with the “parade of really bad things that could happen if the Little Sisters of the Poor get away without buying birth control” argument.
These really bad things already would have happened.
Steve57 (874187) — 6/30/2014 @ 6:59 pmKevin M, at 74: completely agreed.
aphrael (c5786e) — 6/30/2014 @ 7:02 pmWell, if I think it’s a sin to get a blood transfusion to save my life, or my child’s life*, why should I be forced to pay for yours?
*I have assisted with juvenile court orders to give doctors permission to transfuse Jehovah’s Witnesses’ children against the wishes of the parents?
nk (dbc370) — 6/30/2014 @ 7:12 pm” But it is disturbing. ”
It is disturbing that leftists can’t force people to violate their conscience and religion by forcing them to pay for something abhorrent to their beliefs?
Gil hearts his authoritarian desires.
JD (95650e) — 6/30/2014 @ 7:14 pmI’m not all up in arms hysterically about this. But it is disturbing. We’ve allowed Iron Age rationale to affect (however moderately) some peoples health care. And that is a dangerous precedent. What’s more as has been previously pointed out, there is no reasoning presented as to why it is valid only for birth control. . .
I wonder how many people who are hyperventilating over this decision know that Hobby Lobby’s health care plan covers 16 of the 20 “contraception” methods required by ObamaCare? The only four that are not covered are the four that work to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting into a woman’s womb.
And I’m sorry, but if Plan B or Ella is your preferred contraception method then you are a person in dire need of counseling.
JVW (feb406) — 6/30/2014 @ 7:25 pm@82 jd
A lot if people were forced to accept desegregation and a lot more still we’re forced to accept the end of slavery. Surely there were people yelling about authoritarians then too. Would you have been among their ranks?
Gil (277c15) — 6/30/2014 @ 7:38 pmJVW – Teh Narrative does not let facts get in the way.
JD (95650e) — 6/30/2014 @ 7:38 pmNon-responsive mendoucheity, Gil.
JD (95650e) — 6/30/2014 @ 7:43 pmEverybody knows the Civil War was fought over free morning-after pills, JD.
nk (dbc370) — 6/30/2014 @ 7:45 pm“A lot if people were forced to accept desegregation and a lot more still we’re forced to accept the end of slavery. Surely there were people yelling about authoritarians then too. Would you have been among their ranks?”
They was all Democrats, Gil, I don’t think JD woulda been caught dead in that rabble.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/30/2014 @ 7:52 pmGil – there is not one single damn person in the entire country that cannot go out and purchase the 4/20 that Hobby Lobby had religious 1st Amendment objections to. Not one damn person.
JD (95650e) — 6/30/2014 @ 8:18 pmKevin M @69,
Hopefully he SCOTUS will apply the same logic when the cases currently making their way through the courts, such as Oklahoma’s, challenging the ACA on the basis of the legality of offering subsidies via the federal exchange appear on their docket.
The law clearly says, multiple times, subsidies will only be available through exchanges established by he state. The state and federal exchanges are established under two entirely different sections of the ACA. There an be no confusion when the law cites the section to which it is referring. No subsidies, no employer tax penalties.
Steve57 (874187) — 6/30/2014 @ 8:20 pmGil – there is not one single damn person in the entire country that cannot go out and purchase the 4/20 that Hobby Lobby had religious 1st Amendment objections to. Not one damn person.
Pretty sure you wouldn’t even have to purchase them. I believe that Planned Parenthood generally gives out free Plan B and Ella to women who show up “in need” regardless of their financial status. Sure, they might ask for a “donation” but I’m sure you could get your abortifacient without having to pay if that is what you really wanted.
Granted, a $1000 IUD might be a different matter, but on the other thread I suggested that Planned Parenthood just lease out IUDs at a low monthly payment plan.
JVW (feb406) — 6/30/2014 @ 8:25 pmWhere’s my free condoms?
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/30/2014 @ 10:51 pmCan I get them at the Sr. Citizen Center?
Says you. The fact that it isn’t immediately obvious to you that it’s wrong is a sign of how far our society has degenerated.
So? What makes you think it’s right to force such people to violate their conscience?
Absolutely. If the kids need hospitalisation or drugs, a very good case can be made for taking them there or giving them the drugs, but no case can be made for forcing the CS to do so.
Milhouse (b95258) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:00 pmThe end of slavery didn’t require anyone to do anything at all, let alone anything against their conscience. Not even the slaves. Congress simply declared that all slaves were now free to go. Any slave whose conscience didn’t allow him to leave was free to stay — the 13th amendment only bans involuntary servitude. Owners were obviously not best pleased about having to stand back and not do anything while their slaves left, but I don’t believe there were any whose conscience required them to forcibly prevent it. Even those who firmly believed the emancipation was wrong could in good conscience allow it to happen.
Milhouse (b95258) — 6/30/2014 @ 11:17 pmMillhouse, the threat if taking a Christian scientists kids away or the threat of jail is the compelling force that makes such a person take their kids to the hospital. The same is true when you tell some white supremacist who’s conscience tells him desegregation is wrong that his only public school choice is desegregated. And please don’t tell me they have the choice to homeschool. Yes they do but that is akin to me saying hobby lobby has the choice not to run a public business
And just because you can’t imagine someone who’s conscience wasn’t violated by abolishing slavery doesn’t mean there isn’t some person that was. If I firmly believe something is wrong how can I in good conscience allow it to happen? As you said in post 94?
Also to address those that think somehow it’s ok because birth control is trivial and easy to get. My point was never that now people have no recourse. Thank goodness they do. The point is the precedent that it’s ok for someone to affect others health care based on some flawed set of beliefs that are at best unjustified and at worst demonstrably untrue.
Sorry for not responding more I’m on vacation and my smartphone isn’t the easiest to post from.
Gil (277c15) — 7/1/2014 @ 1:30 amNo need to apologize. Somehow, everyone managed to provide their own birth control since the dawn of time. How in the world did the limited set of employers and employees survive prior to the political implementations of this particular mandate issued by HHS?
JD (95650e) — 7/1/2014 @ 3:24 amMaybe you’d like the employer to pay for the motel room too, Gil?
The employer is not affecting your health care. You are affecting your healthcare with your irresponsible behavior. Learn to use your protection in advance. But if you don’t, it’s still there. All this decision said is that the employer does not have to pay for it.
Anyway, I think promiscuous copulation is a decadent bourgeois pastime — non-productive, counter-revolutionary, degenerate and antisocial. Persons who repeatedly engage in it should receive appropriate therapy in our psychiatric hospitals, followed by long term occupational rehabilitation in our Arctic Circle Environmental Reclamation Projects, so that they may be reintegrated as productive members of our collective.
nk (dbc370) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:53 amThis is getting it backwards. What you want is for your athiesm to force Christians to provide for abortion, which to them is murder. You assume that to not provide abortion is the same as acting to affect someone’s health care.
What’s really odd is that Hobby Lobby’s plan provides ‘the pill’. They simply don’t provide things they consider abortion. They do not forbid their employees from getting abortions. They simply don’t want to be forced to provide them.
Dustin (7f67e8) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:58 amOne may think it is arrogant that someone believes something that they consider to be “The Truth”, but the opposite is a world of people who don’t think they know much of the basic issues of life.
More arrogant than believing something is “The Truth” is making others behave according to your version of “The Truth”.
The Hobby Lobby decision was nothing more than saying there is a limit of what government can tell people to do, especially something they were never told to do before.
If one really believes the government can tell you to do whatever it wants, then live with it.
If you don’t think the government can tell you to do whatever it wants, then it is a reasonable question to ask what the boundary is. It seems to me asking someone to assist (by providing financial resources) in what they consider to be murder is pretty far out on the spectrum of what one would think the government can do.
But really, the bottom line is people want to listen to who they want to listen to, because we want to do what they want to do. The universe was designed so that we can do that. The universe was also designed that there are consequences to our choices and actions, some consequences are more immediate than others, some are more devastating than others when they catch up with us.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 7/1/2014 @ 5:59 amGil (277c15) — 7/1/2014 @ 1:30 am
Also to address those that think somehow it’s ok because birth control is trivial and easy to get….The point is the precedent that it’s ok for someone to affect others health care
In the first place, this is not really “health care” and calling it that doesn’t make it “health care”
In the second place, there is no issue about not providing free conctraception. HHS already has an accomodation for religious groups (some of which do not like this but it was not an issue here) where the insurance company has to provide it, without charging anybody any differently if contraception was included or not included in their policy. At least when asked to omit it.
This was not the least burdensome method on religious belief of providing free contraception to employees. The court simply held that a private, closely held, corporation may follow religious beliefs, and the rest followed.
Sammy Finkelman (b7774f) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:00 amFrom the court’s opinion:
The majority opinion said that the claims made by Justice Ginsberg in her dissent were simply false.
She had written:
And had written:
Not true, wrote Justice Alito on the bottom of page 3 and top of page 4 (and footnote 1 on page 4) in his opinion.
Sammy Finkelman (b7774f) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:17 amThis sort of abject stupidity keeps up and employers will simply decline to offer health insurance to workers, which will force them onto ObamaCare, which is of course exactly what the administration has angled to achieve all along. Create the conditions that will kill employer provided health insurance and ObamaCare moves closer to a single-payer system. It ain’t rocket science.
ropelight (35803f) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:30 amIt ain’t rocket science.
Which is good, since it a seems our rocket science isn’t what it used to be.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:43 amMore bad news. This morning the Supreme Court left in place the lower court rulings which had struck down all contraception requirements for Catholic institutions. Look for linkee.
nk (dbc370) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:54 am@JD
I thought it was needed since it was implied I was a douche earlier for not responding by you I might add in 86. In any case I did respond. My takeaway from your post was that you think it’s unfair to force people to pay for something against their conscience and religion. Fine. But then what about the examples I brought up? In fact in the case of slavery some people used their bibles to justify keeping slaves. Yet they were forced to give them up against what they thought was religious and moral justification.
Gil (277c15) — 7/1/2014 @ 7:19 amMark, your comment @31 does not seem to engage with my actual point:
Aphrael, FWIW, I didn’t ignore your reply to my post. This blog’s filters ate my somewhat lengthy response yesterday and I don’t want to re-create it. Others here have already covered just about every point imaginable, so I was doing no more than treading existing territory.
In a way Patterico’s graphic interface, some of it defective (ie, the right-hand side of the text box in many threads extends far beyond a visible border), some of it a matter of presentation (ie, the rather small serif fonts, and too many blog entries that aren’t tied together and end up creating lots of threads that are sort of cul-de-sacs), makes me think of the metaphor of how from a purely cultural/social/creative standpoint, the right frequently ends up looking rather feeble and unsophisticated.
Ronald Reagan made a joke about that when he was speaking before a bunch of young college conservatives during his presidency. Or the idea that a lot of the “cool kids,” the clever, creative types, the hipsters, the trendsetters in Hollywood and high culture — and who all largely lean left — are the folks that everyone wants to hang out with.
Oh, well.
Mark (fdedb8) — 7/1/2014 @ 7:21 amIn fact in the case of slavery some people used their bibles to justify keeping slaves.
I’m curious if you have text of people actually making that particular argument and presenting it before the court system over the past 200 years, or certainly around the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. Any court decision, from A to Z, can be stretched one way or the other with a hypothetical to argue why a ruling does or doesn’t make sense.
Mark (fdedb8) — 7/1/2014 @ 7:26 amAnd some people used their Korans to justify slavery and still do, others used their Vedas and Gidas, and still others didn’t need no stinkin’ books.
ropelight (35803f) — 7/1/2014 @ 7:40 amIn the highly contentious period leading up to The War Against Southern Independence, including John Brown’s well funded attempt to spark a regional slave uprising, both the Abolitionists and the slave holders resorted to the Bible for justification. As current events prove, partisans are quick to twist and misrepresent facts.
ropelight (35803f) — 7/1/2014 @ 7:54 amThere’s been slavery and there’s been slavery and there’s been slavery. Three different kinds.
1) People sold themselves into slavery, indentureship, or apprenticeship as an alternative to starvation;
2) Captives were enslaved after a war as an alternative to slaughtering them;
3) And there were outright slave raids, the sole purpose of which was to obtain cheap labor, with those unable to work being slaughtered,
That third, unfortunately, was what was going on in the New World.
nk (dbc370) — 7/1/2014 @ 8:09 amAnyway, we’re going afield from Gil’s nonsense. People were hanged at Nuremberg because they obeyed the dictates of their government and not their conscience.
nk (dbc370) — 7/1/2014 @ 8:12 amGil, From reading a lot of history I’m pretty sure that with plantation owners keeping slaves it was almost always pure economics that they used to justify the practice to themselves– not any sort of a biblical or religious belief that was a justification for, or that created any obligation to hold slaves (as you stated above).
Agreed, “owning” another human being then or now, anywhere in the world, is a moral outrage. The institution of slavery certainly needed to be stopped in the United States, and several of my forebears fought to help make it so. Abolitionists and people who fought against slavery were mostly religious people. To suggest as you seem to that slave holders tried to cling to their “property” for religious reasons or that you try to connect that to the Obamacare/Hobby Lobby situation is just incomprehensible rot. The mind reels. Enjoy your vacation.
elissa (1f8a0a) — 7/1/2014 @ 8:14 amPlease explain how this could possibly happen? Abolition just happened. Nobody was required to do anything about it.
Very easily. You tut tut sadly about what a wicked world it is, and what a pity it is that good people like yourself can’t change it, and all those wicked people will surely go to Hell, and then you go about your business. You “allow” it to happen in the same way that you “allow” the slaughter in Darfur or Iraq. It has nothing to do with you; you are not required to participate in the crime in any way.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/1/2014 @ 8:40 amWhich is nonsense. Someone is paying for it, and it isn’t the insurance company, or other employers. It’s like telling someone “you can buy a cable package without pr0n channels, but the price is exactly the same as it is with them, and we’ll then throw those channels in as a free gift that you can’t turn down”.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/1/2014 @ 8:49 am95, 105. You do bring up an interesting topic for consideration, that of a majority achieving is desires and perceived needs by means of force. In this case by proxy of benevolent government.
Unfortunately, as we have previously ascertained, simply seizing the assets of the 1% cannot pay for our lifestyle, indeed financed as it is by the world economies at large.
Once and imminently the paychecks are halved and stop altogether, there will be no majorities except those of disparate interest groups employing force.
GLWT.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 7/1/2014 @ 8:52 amBut they’re not allowed to do that. Employers over a certain size now have to offer it.
Independently of that, it would objectively be a good thing for employers to get out of the health insurance game, and I would support a policy that would encourage this, such as McCain/Palin’s policy in 2008. One main reason the USA system is so messed up is that so many people get their insurance through employers. There’s no logical reason why this should be so, and it should be changed. Individual policies ought to be the primary way to get health insurance, and employer-provided insurance ought to be a rare oddity.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/1/2014 @ 8:53 amGarbage. They weren’t forced to do anything at all. And none of them believed or claimed that they had a moral obligation to own slaves, any more than anyone today believes it a moral obligation to own a Rolls Royce.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/1/2014 @ 8:56 am> They weren’t forced to do anything at all.
There were certainly owners of slaves who were forcibly dispossessed of what they beleived to be their property.
aphrael (e777bc) — 7/1/2014 @ 8:59 amGil, you have failed to address your brazen misrepresentation above where in you falsely asserted that this decision affects a person’s health care. It does not. No one’s access to birth control is denied.
SPQR (c4e119) — 7/1/2014 @ 10:48 amSo, what makes their beliefs “flawed?” That they object to being forced to buy certain things to give other people? That they object to being forced to buy stuff to give to other people for reasons you find primitive and outdated?
Newsflash. The government shouldn’t have the power to force anybody to buy anything on behalf of other people at all.
This is probably the worst crime of all, and why people like you, Gil, are so low. It’s just naked theft you voted for. Because of Obamacare people have to buy things that violate their religion then give it away for free. Because Obama has decreed there can be no charge, no deductible, no copay. The employer pays for it all. You have forfeited the right to judge anybody else’s “flawed set of beliefs.” You have either fallen for the big lie, or are in on it. You imagine you have the moral high ground here?
I suppose then by your standards nobody should stop you if you tried to shoplift a couple of bottles of Robitussin from Walmart. Because that could set a precedent that it’s ok for someone to affect anther’s health care (yours) based on some flawed, outmoded Judeo-Christian beliefs about theft being wrong.
Steve57 (c4c6a6) — 7/1/2014 @ 1:29 pmOk too much stuff here I will try to sum up
1. Of course hobby lobby are not like slave owners. I’m just saying the government forces people to do many things against their will. They are not all morally wrong just because it is against their conscience as has been argued. The conscience could be based on bad information or beliefs like for example a white supremacist who finds desegregation wrong to his core
2. Birth control is health care. Some women have been advised not to have kids for their safety. Just because they got pregnant irresponsibly or by accident if birth control failed. For example would you tell someone with a broken arm “sorry next time don’t bounce on aa trampoline without a safety net. That’s irresponsible”. You don’t divide health issues up based on the circumstances by which someone got into one.
3. @steve57: I’m surprised here Steve. Usually I see some great points from you. I merely express an opinion and you attacking me personally? Isn’t this what I hear everyone complains liberals do to conservatives. PS I voted Romney and despise obamacare. What makes the beliefs flawed isn’t what you brought up even though tithing seems very similar to what you described. No. Mainly that it is based on made up stories that never happened. Adam and Eve? Never. Worldwide flood never. Virgin birth? Nope. Resurrection? Hardly. This is not a way to come up with the right way to promote human well being. Yes some things are right some are wrong. We’ve come a long way since then we can do better as a species.
Gotta go on the road here more to come.
Gil (1a8722) — 7/1/2014 @ 2:24 pm#2 is a horse hockey argument start to finish, Gil. Nobody’s denying anybody access to anything or barring them from treatment for anything. Yes, of course many women have been counselled by their doctors that they should not have any or another pregnancy for health reasons. This phenomenon did not start on the day Obamacare was passed. History did not begin when HHS started writing regulations. Countless couples have been dealing with this challenge in varying ways and with various methods for generations. No matter how much you want to pretend it did, absolutely nothing the supreme court did yesterday has changed that. Broken arms from trampolines, slave holders??? Please make it stop.
elissa (1f8a0a) — 7/1/2014 @ 2:52 pmGil,
You gotta bring more game than that, pal.
Hobby Lobby’s insurance actually covers 20 of 24 birth control options. They just don’t want to pay for morning after pills and similar post-conception options which simulate an abortion.
I remember a time when pro-choicers didn’t want the state bothering them about their health decisions. Now, it seems the state being involved is their number one objective.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/1/2014 @ 3:12 pmFWIW,
I do believe, from my general fund of knowledge without detailed study, that some in the past have used a reference about Noah’s sons to justify people of dark skin being subservient/slaves to people of white skin. From what I understand, it is a completely bogus argument.
But really, that is simply one of a multitude of examples of how people find ways to justify what they want to do, in this case in a setting where people said they valued what the Bible taught.
There were also Christians in the south who broke the law by teaching slaves how to read, etc., and Christians in Europe who risked (and sometimes lost) their lives trying to protect Jews.
As always, there is a difference between referring to examples and cherry picking to make one’s point.
Bottom line, do you want to live in a society based primarily on the government telling you what you can and cannot do, or a society where people are largely free to make decisions for themselves with government regulation primarily where your behavior is impinging on another.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 7/1/2014 @ 3:20 pmLets have all who choose one option gather in one place, and all those who choose the other gather in another place.
Then everyone will be happy,
if there is consensus on who will gather where…
oh well, there’s the rub.
Hi elephant.
Gil (1a8722) — 7/1/2014 @ 3:32 pmOther employers cover 24 of 24. Hobby covers 20. Someone working at HL therefore has a healthcare plan that has been affected by the ruling. This persons healthcare plan is different than it would be for any other employer out there. There is no way around it. That there is recourse for the employee is great but not relevant. We have still set a dangerous precedent. I’m not going to repeat myself more than that. Read above my comments or see it better stated by aphrael (58 and less)
Gil,
Stop with the goofy left wing talking points, please.
The ObamaCare law doesn’t even protect the morning after pill. It was just a little something that Kathleen Sebelius rammed down religious organizations’ throats after King Obama himself had promised he would make accomodations for such organizations which had religious objections.
The Democrats knew they couldn’t get the law passed if it contained such language in the bill.
Don’t you remember the Pennsylvania Democrat who was pro-life, and was promised that in exchange for his vote in favor of the ObamaCare bill, he would be assured that abortion services coverage wouldn’t be rammed down the throats of those with religious objections ?
I hope you keep your promise not to repeat yourself any more than that.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/1/2014 @ 3:46 pmWe have still set a dangerous precedent.
I certainly hope so. If it’s dangerous to the government-tit-sucking, whining weinies I like it. I want more decisions like this. Next, I’d like to see employers no longer being required to pay for the treatment of STDs including HIV contracted through sex or illegal drug use. That’s rewarding irresponsible and anti-social behavior.
nk (dbc370) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:02 pmE.S. I think when you cut through the fog of words Gil’s primary concern is that “it’s just not faair“
elissa (1f8a0a) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:10 pmelissa,
What’s scary is that he promises “more to come.” And “more later.”
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:22 pm(He’ll probably return after he consults his ACORN Debating Online Guidelines for his next
chessChutes & Ladders strategic move.)Other employers cover 24 of 24. Hobby covers 20. Someone working at HL therefore has a healthcare plan that has been affected by the ruling. This persons healthcare plan is different than it would be for any other employer out there. There is no way around it. That there is recourse for the employee is great but not relevant. We have still set a dangerous precedent.
Gil, you know what else is scary? Someone working at Company X might have a $60 monthly co-pay for their insurance plan, while someone else at Company Y might have the exact same insurance plan but with no monthly co-pay. These healthcare plans are the very same, but cost the employee vastly different amounts. There is no way around it. That there is recourse for the Company X employee (go get a job at Company Y) is great but not relevant. We have still set a dangerous precedent.
JVW (feb406) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:22 pmdangerous precedents are the worst
happyfeet (8ce051) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:26 pmGil,
If you continue to get outraged !!!!1!! about these things, you may end up on some kind of blood pressure medication.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:28 pmI hope you’re covered.
Or whatever.
mister happy,
dangerous Presidents are even worser.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:29 pmGil,
Does it help to know that Hobby Lobby pays it’s full time associates $14/hour…almost double the national minimum wage?
Dana (4dbf62) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:30 pmi feel so beleaguered
happyfeet (8ce051) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:33 pmThe Obama King is a totally dangerous President.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:44 pmHe has a pen, a phone, and a shamelessness that nobody else has.
Do you know why I respect the very clear Left-wing homosexual aphrael? For the same reason I dislike Gil.
Gil is dishonest while aphreal is honest. I can respect someone who argues the wrong side with integrity. I have no respect for someone who dishonorably argues.
John Hitchcock (8bea9d) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:54 pmI have said repeatedly that Conservative sites need a lot more aphraels on them and a lot less of people like Gil.
I almost said “I got your back, aphrael” but that would be all kinds of wrong. 😉
John Hitchcock (8bea9d) — 7/1/2014 @ 4:56 pm121. Gil (1a8722) — 7/1/2014 @ 2:24 pm
2. Birth control is health care. Some women have been advised not to have kids for their safety.
You’re correct about that. But this is a definable subset.
Sammy Finkelman (95e288) — 7/1/2014 @ 5:00 pm@Dana
It is admirable that they pay well. Good for them it is a fine example of why the minimum wage is not needed. But it’s not the point. Why do you think their pay rates are a mitigating circumstance?
@John
How am I dishonest? These are my thoughts on the matter. What have I lied about? It’s popular to trash me on the site but doing so doesn’t really address the argument
@elephant
Call them talking points if you want. It does not make them irrelevant. It’s a fact hlobby has a different healthcare plan than everyone else based on religious grounds and nobody has explained the rationale as to why some religious convictions are more valid than others. Blame sebelius or obamacare or congressman lying but these are the facts on the ground we must deal with. I will fight with you to repeal this monstrosity but these kind of end around objections are not helping. Oh and I’m not outraged
@JVW
Your right. This is a mess we have a crap healthcare system tied to employment and it shouldn’t ever have been this way. Obamacare made things worse. I really wish the republicans woulda done something when they had total control in the bush (2) years. Still it’s our current situation.
@elissa 122
I never said anyone couldn’t get or was barred from treatment.
@steve 120
At the end of this post you try to set up a scenario in which I would be ok with theft since I don’t subscribe to the kiddo Christian values that outlawed theft. Ha. Theft was known to be wrong long beforethe Jews came around and also was able to be outlawed independently from Judaism in other civilizations. Clearly I do not need some grand moral arbiter to convince me. But while we are extolling the wonderful values within it, why don’t you explain how the killing of innocent first born babies aka 10th plague fits in with your value system. Can you ever imagine punishing all babies for something only some of their. Dads did?
I’m doing my best to answer what I can. Apologies to those I left out
Gil (a7f247) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:36 pmI’m sorry my autocorrect got me. Should be judeo Christian values not kiddo
Gil (a7f247) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:39 pmGil, seriously, if you are really on vacation then go ahead and peel back and enjoy it. Take a break from blogs and politics. Everybody deserves some downtime and relaxation once in a while. We’ll still be here when you’re done vacationing.
elissa (1f8a0a) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:41 pmGil,
Try facts.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:43 pmThen logic.
Gil,
And don’t stress yourself out trying to ‘defeat’ us with your MSNBC talking points.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:45 pmLike elissa recommends, enjoy your vacation.
Have a banana daiquiri. Hit the dance floor. Go visit a historical site. Read a book. And we’ll be here when you return.
nobody has explained the rationale as to why some religious convictions are more valid than others
Are you insinuating that we are not only responsible for your birth control but also for your intellectual capacity?
nk (dbc370) — 7/1/2014 @ 6:50 pmYes. Why is that a problem?
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/1/2014 @ 10:45 pmMD, the Bible clearly and repeatedly endorses slavery and accepts it as just, and has no ethical problem with it. But nowhere does it require anyone to own slaves. Throughout history, most pious people have not owned slaves, for the same reason that they have not owned mansions or coaches-and-four / Rolls Royces.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/1/2014 @ 11:05 pm@millhouse 146
In 94 you said ending of slavery required nothing from anybody at all. Now you agree some people were forced to free their slaves. I thought forcing someone to do something against their conscience was wrong no matter what. Seems like you are ok with it in this case. Or do you claim to know everyone’s true conscience?
Gil (a7f247) — 7/2/2014 @ 12:18 amWhen did I agree to that? It did nothing of the kind. Not a single person freed his slaves after the 13th amendment was ratified, and not a single perso was forced to do so. You are simply making things up, and making up my agreement to them. Idiot.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/2/2014 @ 5:20 amLook at post 146
Gil (a7f247) — 7/2/2014 @ 5:59 amYou said yes to a quote that some people were forced to dispossess slaves
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/1/2014 @ 11:05 pm
I could be wrong, and please correct me, but I have two thoughts about slavery in the Bible:
1) The Bible talks about what is, so that at times things about slavery may be said that is not so much an endorsement of it, but simply recognizing the reality of it in human experience.
2) The slavery allowed for in the Bible is generally more of a (initially) voluntary servitude for economic reasons, as opposed to being forced into slavery by threat of physical harm.
If David took prisoners of war as slaves, I’m not sure that is an endorsement of slavery as OK in God’s eyes, as we know David did a number of things that God was not happy with.
My comment was in relation to slavery as in the US, where people were “stolen” and forced into slavery.
But by all means, I am describing my understanding from my general knowledge base, and I have never paid a lot of attention to the issue of slavery as reading the Bible.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 7/2/2014 @ 6:00 amHi MD
There are both kinds of slavery on the bible. And the rules are barbaric and immoral. For example you may beat your slave unconscience as long as he is able to get up within a few days there is no punishment. Also if you give a Jewish slave (this is more like the case of voluntary servitude) a wife during service and then he wants to go free on his 7th year, he can but the wife and kids stay for they are your property. These are laws laid down in exodus. Not a description of the status quo.
I would think that an almighty moral god would have an 11th commandment “thou shalt never own another human” or perhaps replace the 9th (coveting which is merely a thought crime) with that to keep it at a nice round 10.
Gil (a7f247) — 7/2/2014 @ 6:18 amGil and Milhouse, you two deserve each other. Yes, Gil, we told slave owners they no longer could keep slaves. Milhouse, I imagine a slave owner here or there was “forced” to unlock his slaves’ pen, or manacles, or put down the whip, and slave catchers were now hanged if they shot down “runaways” who the law said were now free. No, they were not forced to sign papers of manumission, and if that’s what you meant that’s silly sophistry.
And it’s more like slavery to tell me that I have to pay for Miss Roundheel’s abortion than it is to tell Miss Roundheel’s to keep her vagina out of my wallet (credit John Hickok). Your slavery example is silly, Gil.
And there were any number of justifications for slavery, and some might even approach the modern equivalent of the justification of guardianships and institutionalizations of the mentally disabled. Personally, I like Eli Wallach’s from “The Magnificent Seven”: If God had not meant them to be shorn, he would not have made them sheep.
nk (dbc370) — 7/2/2014 @ 6:19 amGil (a7f247) — 7/2/2014 @ 6:18 am
Yeah, Gil, we got it. Our religion is barbaric. Brie and chardonnay is better. We’ll take it under advisement.
nk (dbc370) — 7/2/2014 @ 6:23 amGil,
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 7/2/2014 @ 6:47 ammaybe you should spend time reading other parts of the Bible as well to put things in perspective,
things like we are sinful creatures and in no place to put ourselves in the place of judging God
and that He is patient and loves you in spite of yourself, He even died to take the punishment you deserve, just like me.
These are laws laid down in exodus. Not a description of the status quo.
Maybe the status quo was worse…
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 7/2/2014 @ 6:49 amMaybe the status quo was worse…
I mentioned some of it earlier. Starvation, or slaughter of conquered people.
The pre-Christian Greeks, BTW, also recognized murder as a sin which offended the gods, and it included the murder of slaves. War was a defense. In order for the Spartans to keep their serf population tame, they found it necessary to terrorize them and eliminate troublemakers. So every year, the Senate would declare war on the serfs. The way people try to fool God ….
nk (dbc370) — 7/2/2014 @ 6:58 am@nk
Gil (a7f247) — 7/2/2014 @ 7:10 amI’m just using the end of slavery as an example of when the government forced people to do something against their will and it was morally right. Millhouse previously said it was always wrong to do so. Other than that I’m not trying to compare slavery to healthcare.
No, I didn’t. Liar. What does it even mean to force someone “to dispossess slaves”? It’s not English.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/2/2014 @ 7:26 amMost of the things the government forces people to do against their will are morally right. The things that come into the the category of “don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff”, for example. Some are not morally right. Conscription comes to mind. Jim Crow laws would be another. I’ve argued in court that it was immoral and unconstitutional to make it a crime for a man to harbor his brother who had just escaped from prison and not to turn him in to the authorities. And it is not morally right for the government to make me pay for somebody’s abortion. It is making me an accomplice to infanticide. It is a form of slavery — a theft of my free will and conscience — directed at me. Can the State of Florida conscript me to pull the switch on “Old Sparky”?
nk (dbc370) — 7/2/2014 @ 7:33 amThe Bible isn’t shy about condemning things it disapproves of. And it mentions slavery many times throughout, without even a hint of disapproval. It assumes that people will have slaves. And Leviticus 25:39-46 explicitly provides that Jewish “slaves” serve only a limited term of indenture, but foreign slaves are permanent property.
Generally, but fathers could sell their children, and civilians captured as spoils of war were slaves.
On the rare occasion he did wrong, God told him so. In this case, it seems to be endorsed in several places in Numbers and Deuteronomy.
But this isn’t true. American slave traders didn’t go capturing anyone; they went to established markets and bought people who were already slaves by whatever laws existed in those countries.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/2/2014 @ 7:42 amThey’re God’s laws, so by definitoin they are moral. He defines right and wrong. It’s one of the perks of creating the world.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/2/2014 @ 7:44 amNo, it’s precisely the point at issue. Gil’s entire case is that people were forced to do something they thought morally wrong. And that is a lie. Nobody was forced to do anything, let alone anything they thought was wrong. From the slave owners’ point of view, all that happened was that their property was stolen from them. Their consciences were as free as that of any reobbery victim.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/2/2014 @ 7:47 amAmerican slave traders didn’t go capturing anyone; they went to established markets and bought people who were already slaves by whatever laws existed in those countries.
Accessory after the fact has always been a crime. And their ships waiting by the seashore for the Hutus to bring some captured Tutsis, made them accessories before the fact. And bargaining with the Hutus for the healthy ones, knowing the rejects would be slaughtered, made them accessories during the fact. Actually, the slave traders who provided the incentive are far more morally and legally culpable than the slavecatchers — just like the Nazis who ordered the enslavement of Sammy Finkelman’s father were more culpable than the conscripts who carried out the order.
nk (dbc370) — 7/2/2014 @ 7:52 amWell, Milhouse, I’m on your side in this argument. Please take my chiding as being for sinking to Gil’s level. He’s basically stupid.
nk (dbc370) — 7/2/2014 @ 7:54 am@millhouse
We have a disagreement. If I understand correctly you’re saying that when the government forcibly takes something away it’s not the same as the government forcing you to give it up. I think it is we disagree it doesn’t mean I’m dishonest or liar.
Gil (72312e) — 7/2/2014 @ 11:00 amOne is outright theft (brigandage), the other is theft under color of authority.
askeptic (efcf22) — 7/2/2014 @ 11:17 amGil wrote in #140,
“I will fight with you to repeal this monstrosity but these kind of end around objections are not helping.”
Gil, I think we’ve exposed you as a liar—and a second-rate one, at that.
During both the 2008 and 2008 Presidential campaigns, people would call conservative talk radio shows and say something like, “I’m a lifelong Republican, but I’m voting for Barack Obama because, blah, blah, blah…”
It was a scripted, coordinated strategy to deceive people.
You’re doing the same thing here. You’re claiming to be against ObamaCare, yet you seem totally in love with the idea of the government imposing insane regulations upon employers. In an earlier comment, I actually explained to you that these morning after pill regulations were not even part of the ACA Bill—the morning after pill regulations were added by Kathleen Sebelius—even after Pennsylvania pro-life Democrat Congressman Bart Stupak was PROMISED that they would not do that, in exchange for his affirmative vote for the Bill on the House floor.
None of that was important to you because you actually support ObamaCare.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/2/2014 @ 11:28 amOn what basis do you claim I’m lying to you? Because my opinion differs from yours? I railed against obamacare. I love the free market I’m a big fan of Milton freidman having watched all YouTube content with him I could find and even forced my wife to watch some. I’m not in favor of government in healthcare. But they are and sebelius has made mandates regardless of promisses (since when is it news that politicians break promises “no new taxes”). Given that we are in this mess I reject the notion that religious grounds should be allowed to somehow end up changing things for a subset of people / situations.
That’s all. No support for obamacare. It’s simple. Why don’t you accept this as my opinion without ulterior motives?
Is it typical to just brandish anyone who disagrees a liar in this comment board? Aren’t these kind of tactics exactly what we hate about liberal politicians?
Gil (a7f247) — 7/2/2014 @ 2:26 pmGil,
If you’re against ObamaCare because you oppose the government making mandates about health care coverage, then you should be against ObamaCare making mandates about health care coverage.
You’re so Orwellian, it’s funny.
It’s as if you’re arguing against robbing banks, then justifying Bonnie & Clyde’s bank robberies.
Self-awareness is a virtue, Gil.
Elephant Stone (6a6f37) — 7/2/2014 @ 2:31 pm1. What does “forcing you to give up” your slaves mean? What does one do, to give them up? Is it like giving things up for lent? Or are you thinking that they had to deliver their slaves (forcibly?) to some government depot?! The end of slavery did not require anyone to do anything. The government simply declared that all slaves were now free. That’s all. The owners weren’t even required to inform the slaves of their new status.
2. Even if they had been required to do something, which they weren’t, I don’t believe there existed then or exists now anybody whose conscience doesn’t allow him to cooperate with a robber. When the mugger says “give me your wallet”, nobody says “no, I can’t do that because it would be wrong, my conscience won’t allow it”. Nobody wants to be robbed, but nobody thinks it a moral failing. It’s the robber who’s doing wrong, not the victim.
Thus, the end of slavery did not require anybody to violate their conscience. And this is blindingly obvious; you can’t possibly not have understood this. Your analogy between the end of slavery and making someone an accomplice to a crime was always dishonest. But your comment #150 went beyond that; it was a blatant lie, without any excuse at all.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/2/2014 @ 2:47 pmMillhouse.
Look at your comment 146. You quote someone who said “there were certainly owners of slaves who were forcibly dispossessed of their slaves” to which you replied “yes why is that a problem”. This is what I referred to when I said you agreed some owners were forced to give up their slaves. That you seem to not have meant that in the way I understood it does not make me a liar. I apologize for the misunderstanding surely you can that it was not a blatant lie?
Gil (a7f247) — 7/2/2014 @ 4:19 pmGil, you’re not just a liar, you’re really really stupid. I wrote “were forcibly dispossessed of their slaves”. You claimed I wrote “were forced to dispossess slaves”, which doesn’t even make any sense, and is certainly nothing like what I wrote. The words are right there, how can you deny them? And how could you pretend I wrote the second instead of the first, and think nobody would notice. Even a liar isn’t usually so brazen.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/2/2014 @ 4:26 pmAgain, your claim, your entire claim, was that abolition meant slave owners were forced to violate their consciences. And you utterly failed to support that claim, because it’s obviously false.
Milhouse (b95258) — 7/2/2014 @ 4:27 pm@ Millhouse
Forcing you to give up your slaves means forcing you to stop treating them as property. Forcing you to stop beating them. Forcing you to stop selling them or having your way with the women. You cannot do these things to free men under threat of legal consequences. A war was waged over at least partially abolishing slavery which also constitutes force. This point is moot anyway. There are many examples if the government forcing people into things. Force doesn’t have to be physical as in the case of a white supremacist who believes desegregation is morally wrong. He is forced to send his kids to a desegregated school if he wants public schooling. But evening he doesn’t he is forced to support the school through taxes etc. in the last case the compelling force is possibl lein on his property or other monetary action for evading taxes.
Gil (72312e) — 7/2/2014 @ 4:36 pm@millhouse
I can’t copy paste from this page on my iPhone so I was scrolling back and forth typing. The words are out order but I think they mean the same thing. You don’t. The difference is I’m tying to work out our misunderstanding and you are just leveling accusations of stupidity and dishonesty. Ok we are not going to get far this way.
Gil (72312e) — 7/2/2014 @ 5:23 pmIf only Stanley Ann Dunham had had access to morning after contraception or condoms.
firefirefire (b0457e) — 7/10/2014 @ 4:13 amOr maybe just kept her knees together.
177. The birth control pill was released to the public, I think, in 1962, the year after Barack Obama was born. Non-therapeutic abortion was illegal everywhere in the United States and abortion for medical reasons was not a wide-open loophole, but usually had to be approved by an ethics committee in a hospital.
That is an irony, I suppose.
Sammy Finkelman (cd2969) — 7/10/2014 @ 6:59 amGil (72312e) — 7/2/2014 @ 5:23 pm
I can’t copy paste from this page on my iPhone so I was scrolling back and forth typing. The words are out order but I think they mean the same thing.
So why are tablets the wave of the future?
You could try maybe voice entry.
Sammy Finkelman (cd2969) — 7/10/2014 @ 7:01 am