Heck, at that point, go single-payer and completely sever the connection between health insurance and employment.
You could do that, just have to get Democrats on board. A single payer bill came up for a vote, didn’t do so well.
These statements are not self-evident. There is a much more direct link between money paid to an insurance company and then used by the insurance company to fund treatments than there is between money paid to the general fund of the United States and ultimately used for a given federal program.
You say they ought to be considered the same; I say they should not.
Luckily, we have already agreed on a method to resolve such disagreements.
When did this occur, just out of curiosity? And are you implying the Republicans were on board?
How would you feel if abortions were covered by medicaid and federal tax dollars paid for them? Would then link be more direct there? The reason I ask is because people seem to see more direct links when its somethign they care about.
We are arguing policy here not the legitimacy of the judicial system. If you want to say we have an irreconcilable difference of opinions then thats fine but you retreat to “let the courts resolve the issue” far to frequently when you are not making headway on the policy arguments (either because your arguments are weak or because the people you are arguing with are pigheaded).
I think I offer up that statement – “Let the courts decide” – when the arguments reach an impasse.
If everyone took that attitude none of these threads would be more than 3-5 pages long. Anyone that is capable of being convinced of something other than what they already believe is either convinced they are wrong (if they are wrong) in the first few pages of a thread or they will simply keep looking for ways to continue to justify their position so that they can pretend that requiring nuns to sign a form saying that they are refusing to provide birth control is a burden on their exercise of their religion because that affidavit may be used by some of their employees to get birth control coverage elsewhere.
The birth control requirement of the ACA might not pass strict scrutiny but I don’t see how requiring employers to state their objection to providing legally required coverage on then basis of religious burden doesn’t pass strict scrutiny even if that affidavit can be used by an employee to prove they they do not have birth control coverage and can therefore get it somewhere else.
You don’t see it, and that’s certainly a defensible position to take. A reasonable person could certainly reach that conclusion.
But are you also saying that no reasonable person could adopt the position that performing any act that has the effect of deputizing someone to sin on your behalf is itself sinful?
If so, there we disagree, and I suspect the only argument that will have any headway with you is the one where I can say, “As a matter of law, the Supreme Court says that the nuns are entitled to refuse to sign.”
OK, so you are saying we have to agree to disagree. Let me push back one more time. Lets assume that the insurance company didn’t have its own religious exemption and would be compelled by law to provide contraception coverage if the insured wants it. If that insurance company doesn’t consider contraception a sin then how does that their provision of contraception coverage to an intervening actor that demands it become a sin on your part (I assume we have acknowledged that the nuns are being asked to pay for anything here? Doesn’t the concept of proximate cause of the sin come into play at some point? If it doesn’t then what if any limits are there on what laws I can refuse to obey as a result of the religious freedom? I can play seven degrees of kevin bacon and link my refusal to obey almost any law to a religious conviction if I wanted to.
Also, I think the nuns (or whoever is running the show) aren’t trying to maintain their own religious freedom so much as they are trying to impose their religion on others and trying to use the courts as an instrument to do so? Aren’t the religious freedoms (to be free from religion) of the insured who is seeking contraception being abridged? Or is the government not an actor in abridging the religious freedom of the employees?
Just how sincere is Hobby Lobby really?
What does this say about their sincerity?
Assuming that it shows that they’re not sincere, would it affect their standing? That’s not just a rhetorical question, I’m genuinely curious.
I’m glad that this got prompt attention. When I first heard about the original bullshit, I was pretty angry. I was also relatively sure that their objection was a penny-pinching one, rather than a moral one. I hate to say that I just bought a t-shirt from these people. It was ridiculously cheap. I had been actively boycotting them for a couple of years, but really needed a yellow t-shirt and knew I could get one there for three bucks. I feel both vindicated and disappointed in myself for giving in to the temptation of convenience. Ive been bitching about them to everyone that would listen for quite awhile now, and this asshole goes back on the firm stance he took. I hope my preaching was more effective on others than my conviction proved to be with myself. Once again, I re-establish my boycott of Hobby Lobby. As a Christian who tries to follow the teachings and behavior of Christ, rather than the hate proscribed by many of his “followers”, I hope to do better in the future.:smack:
Not really. The court isn’t going to substitute its judgment for Hobby Lobby’s regarding which minimal ties to alleged abortifacients are okay and which are not. It would keep it from crafting a workable rule to govern everyone else, for one thing.
They’ll probably take away the 401k now that someone is going to point this out to them. :mad:
Ah… good ol’ sincerely held religious beliefs!
I mean, it’s not as if Hobby Lobby, prior to the passage of the ACA, provided health insurance coverage to its employees that covered exactly the contraceptives to which they now object: Get real: covering contraception doesn't violate employers' religious freedom | Jill Filipovic | The Guardian
“Notably, the Hobby Lobby used to have an employee insurance plan that covered the very same birth control methods it now claims violate its religious freedom. It wasn’t until the GOP raised a stink about the contraception rules in Obama’s healthcare legislation that the Hobby Lobby “re-examined” its insurance policies. Is the religious belief sincerely held? Probably. But it’s as much political and cynical as it is faith-based.”
And I’m sure they carefully monitor their investments to ensure that they’re not profiting from the kinds of contraception they now object to: Hobby Lobby’s Hypocrisy: The Company’s Retirement Plan Invests in Contraception Manufacturers – Mother Jones
What’s that?
Oh.
Nevermind…
Good to see you read the thread before jumping in.
Maybe that’s what irae meant by “what’s that?”
This mutual fund stuff speaks to the point that this case really turns on for me: the fact that we don’t really mean anything like “sincerely held” when we say it. I don’t mean at all to disparage those with religious beliefs when I say this, but that “smoking gun” that Mother Jones unearthed is only worth anything if one really seriously thinks that all the “sincerely” religious are literally sincere about the tenets of their faith and pursue those principles to their rational ends. In reality, do even one in a million people actually have that kind of devotion?
There’s no credible way to argue, on the grounds of alleged hypocrisy, that any particular mainstream religious belief isn’t sincerely held in the present climate. It’s totally at odds with human history to suggest that unless a person investigates the ramifications of all possible actions to see whether they set into motion a chain of events that will result in an outcome contrary to their faith, that person isn’t really a religious person. We all know what the culture of Christianity looks like. It isn’t a practice or a formula you can look up. If you argue (as Mother Jones is suggesting we do) that an individual isn’t acting out of sincere Christian belief because look at all the other actions a “Christian” “should” be taking that this individual isn’t taking, you’re being totally blind to that culture.
Long story short, I think maybe Hobby Lobby wins because this line of argument (which I think Hamlet has been focusing on in the GD thread recently) – namely, that there’s reason to doubt that this in particular is an actual religiously motivated conviction, or alternatively, that to the extent it’s real it isn’t entitled to very much deference – just isn’t on the table. I think it should be, but I don’t think you can say “this isn’t really what we mean by freedom of religion, like at all.” It just doesn’t fly, because then you’re attacking Christianity.
But it’s not a matter of “which minimal ties” but whether the logic used for/against one also applies to the other. It doesn’t too unworkable a general policy to require a clear declaration of your actual belief that delineates the practices you do think are okay from the ones you don’t, and to hold that, if you cannot do so, you do not have a sincerely held belief about the subject in question.
It’s not substituting their own judgment, but determining whether the belief truly is sincerely held, based on the evidence of practice. The argument is whether Hobby Lobby has actually made a judgment, or is lying about what they claim is a sincerely held belief.
Sure, a clear delineation can be made for the mutual funds issue, as they are paying a third party that then takes control of the money, while, with providing insurance, they are the ones actually controlling the money. But comparing insurance against insurance, I can see no difference that can be declared.
Of course, I’m not a lawyer. I’m just trying to think reasonably about what “sincerely held belief” can possibly mean. Surely it cannot mean that you can say you are against X but do X. Surely you have to prove that what you are doing is actually Y.
Regardless of religious sincerity, I find it difficult to believe that this isn’t politically Motivated. Why are they now suddenly concerned about what their insurance covers when they apparently weren’t before? And if it’s true that a Christian can’t be expected to follow all of the rules, then why should they be given deference in this one instance?
They have always been against abortion-causing therapies covered by their insurance.
What do you mean when you say, “Suddenly concerned?” The sudden concern is that before the ACA, the law permitted them not to cover abortion-causing therapies, and they did not. Since the law passed, they still do not, but now they’re in legal trouble over the lack.
Why should a Christian in this instance get a pass?
Because the Religious Freedom Restoration Act says that Congress can’t pass a law that substantially burdens a person’s exercise of religion, unless certain conditiosn are met, and the Dictionary Act says that the word “persons” includes “corporations.”
These points have been discussed at length above.
See post #590. They invest in companies that make some of the very substances they are now objecting to.