Let The Slippery Slope Begin: Government Contractors Using Hobby Lobby Ruling To Deny LGBT Rights

[elucidator]

@Bricker

…You sort of missed the step where we first insisted that the business pay for its employees’ contraception. We, in other words, insisted that a business concern itself with its employees’ reproductive health by ordering the business to pay for insurance coverage of contraception.

Having done so, we now must live with the restrictions we placed on such government orders: they must not substantially burden religious practice, unless certain other conditions are met…

Is reproductive health some special category of health care, inherently suspect, and therefore subject to restrictions that do not apply to blood pressure medication or vaccinations? And what “burden to religious practice” are we talking about? The dreadful burden of knowing that other people do not adhere to my religious opinions?

…Whether or not sincerity can or cannot be quantified or objectified, you seem to be unaware that we already, and uncontroversially, purport to do so almost every day.

Every time we ask a court to judge someone guilty of first degree murder, we’re asking that court to judge the sincerity of the accused’s state of mind, because determining his intent is how we distinguish first degree murder from lesser crimes. Every time we ask a court to weigh a claim of self-defense, we require that court to pass judgement on the sincerity of the claim that the accused truly felt fear – not just any fear, but the kind of specific fear that justified self-defense.

This is a well-known fact, to the populace in general and certainly to watchers of TV shows from Perry Mason to Franklin and Bash. Courts are routinely asked to judge the sincerity of claims about a person’s thoughts as well as their actions.

Ah! So we are going to submit all of these disagreements to trial by jury, then?

Though i was not aware that the “state of mind” of the accused had any bearing on a murder trial. The question is whether or not he actually committed the action he is accused of committing. True, he may be found not guilty by reason of insanity, but can he be found not guilty by reason of religious opinion?

Perhaps we are better served by restricting ourselves to the actual matter at hand without drawing in inferences from entirely unrelated legal issues.