In the sense that RFRA was all but unanimous, it seems inarguably true that the problem is not Republicans.
I think that’s hilarious. You just called the organization “Obama for America” a puppet of the Republican Party.
She didn’t call this group a “puppet of the Republican Party”, she said that said puppets set the stage for such actions.
Like the Supreme Court? Are they the puppet? It was absolutely diabolical how Republicans manipulated the court into upholding DOMA. And who doesn’t remember how they maneuvered it into striking down the Affordable Care Act?
What I’m laughing at is the lack of self awareness. The OP is bitching, “How can people lobby against an executive order I like that hasn’t even happened yet based on a SCOTUS ruling I don’t like!? That’s unacceptable! Also, Republicans! And Christians!”
Shayna’s “Republican puppets” aren’t fundamentally different from Fox’s “liberal media”. Both are just ill defined scapegoats. Scapegoats that don’t even have to make all that much sense as long as they are talked about with passion and hysteria.
As I mentioned in another thread, all you’re doing is hurting your arguments. I don’t necessarily want to disagree with you (I’m politically dead center, so my opinions can actually be swayed by the best argument), but if you keep talking like that, I have no choice. Unless you’re being satirical and your goal is to make people come away thinking the exact opposite of what you say, you may want to lighten up on the name calling and ad hominem usage.
PS As has been pointed out already, you titled the thread “Government Contractors Using Hobby Lobby Ruling To Deny LGBT Rights”, so I personally would recommend you clarifying your definition of the word “using”, as, to a casual reader, the title does appear to convey the thought that you’re denying having.
I don’t discount the possibility that you meant it in terms of “they’re taking advantage of the situation being in the news and the administration’s loss being fresh (likely making the administration more open to considering such requests) to attempt to push the envelope to see how far they can go under the umbrella of ‘religious freedom’”, but that isn’t exactly what you wrote.
At best, your title is ambiguous, and, as such, can and will be read in a few different ways (as I’ve attempted to illustrate here). To clear up what you meant requires polite clarification, not insults and name calling.
No. Religion is not the problem. I know a lot of very religious people who are Democrats. Born Again Christians, even. I don’t see Jews or Muslims or Hindi people trying to get the secular U.S. government to enact legislation favorable to their beliefs, either. They are nothing like the evil sickness that permeates specifically the Republican Party who are trying to turn our country into a Christian Theocracy (and doing a damn fine job of it so far).
I don’t really care what you want to read into my Pit rants, which are exactly that: rants, not “debates.”
There’s an obvious reason this group waited until the Supreme Nutjobs handed down their decision on the Hobby Lobby case. What, you think the timing was purely coincidental? It is to laugh.
The only “reading into” that I did was agreeing with you, as evidenced by that second line, minus all the ad hominem and name calling (again).
I always found this attitude to be incredibly self serving. It seems to claim that all positions in the Pit are valid because well reasoned arguments aren’t necessary. It doesn’t matter that this is a Democratic organization writing the president because, well, because Republicans. It doesn’t matter that we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if the Supreme Court hadn’t struck down DOMA because they’re reactionary nutjobs. SCOTUS upholds the ACA? That doesn’t fit in your narrative, so that doesn’t matter either.
Those evil republicans making the democrats hate the gays.
I don’t have any problem with the sincerely religious, so long as they don’t try to impose it on anyone else. I don’t see any particular hypocrisy in a Mom and Pop store not wanting to be open on Sunday, nor any problem with them hiring someone to work on Sunday because he does not share their theological calender. Nor a very Orthodox Jew hiring a shabby goy to come around on Saturday to help out. I question whether any God worthy of the Name imposes irrational and unreasonable demands just for the heck of it, but that’s way over my pay grade…
But when did we begin to assume that a business is an incarnation of its owners? That it legitimately takes on the religious restrictions of its owners? Is it the divine miracle of property? I own a piece of land, haven’t noticed that I’m all brown and loamy, covered with grass and weeds. Not has my property become noticeably witty, charming, and warm-hearted. Still just a bunch of dirt.
A business is more a pubic entity than a private one, and we have rules about public entities. That they may not injure and belittle our citizens by refusing them accommodation on the basis of race being the most prominent example.
What, then, is unreasonable about insisting that a business has no business concerning itself with the reproductive health decisions of its employees? It does not own its employees, they are not requited to be communicants of a particular faith, so why is there some sort of exception for issues of sex and reproduction?
As well, this barrel of bullshit about “sincere” religious opinions reminds me too much of the Dark Days, when young men tried to prove themselves legitimately “conscientious objectors”. And the conniption fits local draft boards put themselves through, trying to weed out who was sincerely religious and who just didn’t want to get shot. Why, I heard there was one draft board in Vermont that accepted a Unitarian as being “sincerely religious”.
Sincerity cannot be quantified or objectified, no judge can peer into another man’s soul, or decide what is best for her ovaries. Not even a supreme judge. Perhaps a Supreme Judge, but again: way over my pay grade…
Well, don’t laugh… California’s Proposition 8 (anti gay marriage) passed in part because the churches persuaded blacks to hate gays.
Wait, wait, wait. I thought we’d been told repeatedly that the “slippery slope” argument is total bunk, usually in regard to gun laws and the like. So what are you worried about - this will have no effect whatsoever on any future laws or rulings, it’s just an isolated decision. Chill out. Hobby Lobby will still pay for many contraceptive options, just not “morning after” solutions, so you can avoid pregnancy in plenty of fully paid-for ways, and nobody will ever try to carve out deeper exemptions for any reason whatsoever.
I wonder, about some sort of “backlash” in the making… something about “piercing the corporate veil” that protects people from personal liability in corporate matters…
Alex Park, writing in Salon - “That separation is what legal and business scholars call the “corporate veil,” and it’s fundamental to the entire operation. Now, thanks to the Hobby Lobby case, it’s in question. By letting Hobby Lobby’s owners assert their personal religious rights over an entire corporation, the Supreme Court has poked a major hole in the veil. In other words, if a company is not truly separate from its owners, the owners could be made responsible for its debts and other burdens.”
No more protection against personal liability claims and corporate debts/obligations?
Burt Neuborne, law professor at New York University - “If religious shareholders can do it, why can’t creditors and government regulators pierce the corporate veil in the other direction?”
44 other law professors, who filed a friends-of-the-court brief - “Allowing a corporation, through either shareholder vote or board resolution, to take on and assert the religious beliefs of its shareholders in order to avoid having to comply with a generally-applicable law with a secular purpose is fundamentally at odds with the entire concept of incorporation. Creating such an unprecedented and idiosyncratic tear in the corporate veil would also carry with it unintended consequences, many of which are not easily foreseen.”
I Am Not A Lawyer. Never pretended to be. But the “What Ifs” are starting go get interesting.
These slippery slope arguments coming from the Hobby Lobby decision are absurd. I’ve seen articles about how companies might be allowed to stone their employees to death or allow racial segregation. The test is simple:
Does the law, 1) impact a sincerely held religious belief, AND 2) If so, is the government accomplishing its goal by the least restrictive means?
The left is always leaving out #2 in their “analyses”. The goal of eliminating racial discrimination in the public sphere is, well, to eliminate racial discrimination in the public sphere. There is no lesser restrictive means to do that than to outlaw it, so even if you can convince a judge that your beliefs require racial segregation at your restaurant, you are out of luck. (The other absurdities suffer from the same flaw).
If the government’s goal is universal contraception coverage for women, then as the Court said, there IS in fact an easier way of doing it without requiring private business to provide it.
Don’t lump ALL us Catholics together. I’m a free thinking, self deterministic “Cafeteria Catholic” (and proud of it) who doesn’t let some guy in a pulpit and a funny hat tell me what to think, what to say, OR how to vote.
This. In its entirety.
By being Cafeteria Catholic, you’re sort of by definition being a bad Catholic. Assuming that the official position of the Church is the measuring stick by which you measure Catholicism. The breed standard.
So you’re a loveable mutt. Not a nearly blind Dalmatian.
I can live with that 
I would guess about the time we permitted the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore to organize under the law as a corporation. 1789, I think. I could be off base.
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.
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.
Assuming your traditional tone of humorless sarcasm, I take it I am supposed to be impressed by the early date, and offer the respect due to wrong that is of venerable standing?
And wasn’t this decision made long before corporations were endowed by their Creator etc. etc.?
(Aside: Seen lately on the internet: Slavery is the notion that a person is property, the Hobby Lobby decision reflects the notion that property is a person.)