FTT Off-Topic: Some Religions Are More Equal Than Others

Try Harder To Be Male Next Life

As always with FTT O-T, not sports and not sorry; read or skip.

Today the Supreme Court, in one of those red vs. blue partisan decisions that make something of a mockery of the idea that the Court is actually very different from either of the other branches of government... ruled 5-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby, a privately owned company that is so morally opposed to women having contraception that they aren't going to pay for that as part of their medical benefits.


(Oh, and by the way, Hobby Lobby made money from birth control products through a shell company. No, seriously. Anyway, not the point.)

Now, I don't much care when you believe life begins, or whether you think that contraception is wide-scale abortion. I don't have the time or energy to discuss why I think you are wrong, and that I am right. But what we can both agree, hopefully, is that this decision is freaking batshit.

Look, the thing about being religious is that you have to, in this country at least, acknowledge that other faiths exist and don't have any more rights on this mortal coil than you do. Even if they are, well, wrong about everything, because they are in the same boat as you are; a minority that could get punished at any moment without protection. And now, thanks to the Court, that's no longer the case.

Religions that care more about this get to inconvenience and/or short-change their employees. If you run a company and you have religious issues with transfusions, psychiatry, vaccinations... nope, not valid. Only women, and only women who would like to control what happens to their bodies if and when they choose to have sex, matters this much.

Now, again, it doesn't really matter what your position on this is. Law that is settled around exceptions is inherently weak and/or crazed, and to say that this is bad law is obvious. To say that it is one of the worst decisions in the Court's history, and one that will be adjudicated again and again in the future because other plaintiffs will take it as precedent... also seems kind of obvious. I'm kind of amazed that this got to the Court in the first place, or that the five that signed on to this really couldn't come up with any better way to get to the decision they wanted to make.

The plain and simple fact of the matter is that you pay employees in cash and benefits. What they choose to spend on is, well, their decision. Hobby Lobby's female employees are, in all likelihood, going to simply spend their cash on what the company has shorted them in the benefits package.

So why not, well, be religiously opposed to dentistry? The minimum wage law? Bathroom breaks? Or any other OSHA standard that impedes profitability?