SCOTUS Rules In Favor Of Hobby Lobby

[CapnAwesome]

I think the precedent is not as bad as people are complaining about. As an Atheist if I opened a company I wouldn't want to be forced to pay for something I disagreed with.

How about if we apply that same logic to taxes paid by individuals as well? I'd love to tell the Pentagon to go suck a fat one.

So would I.

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Oh please. Why do you have to be such a dork?

Seriously, why do you hate women so much?

Did your mother mistreat you in some way? Did some woman break your heart and you now blame all women for it?

I'm just trying to understand your rage against women.

Are there any women in your family? Do you like know any women personally? Maybe you could find some woman (a sister, an aunt, a female friend if you have any) who you could talk to and perhaps they could explain to you certain issues they face? Clearly, you don't have any daughters.

It might do you some good to just sit down and listen to one, once in a while.

This doesn't make sense and also is beneath you. The government forcing a company to pay for birth control (Hint: you can buy it for yourself) is not equal to hating women. It's so much easier to imagine your opponents as people who are bad or evil then people who have intellectually reached their own positions. That's why people on the left are so quick to throw out the terms sexist or racist rather than actually argue a position. At the best it is a stretch to say that anyone supporting this decision is doing so because of sexism.

[Esquilax]

Because Exlax's "what if" arguments simply aren't true. For another, he makes fallacious and stereotypical points based on his hatred for conservatives and on his anti-religious bigotry. It would be nothing more than an endless back and forth argument over ideology.

I'm sorry, how many times have we even interacted on these forums? I can think of one time total, and yet you sure seem to think you know a lot about how my mind works. Mayhaps this is just a vague dodge to avoid having to answer for your own idiocy? It must feel so much better when you can just pretend that nobody who disagrees with you has valid points, that they just hate you personally. But that, like the rest of what you've displayed here, is child logic.

Incidentally, I also had more points than just my three hypotheticals, like in my first post, or my third where I called you out on your spurious invocation of Sandra Fluke. So all this clucking of yours? Rings hollow.

Justice Alito raised those issues that Exlax mentioned and which others were arguing. Basically saying that it was the abortion and certain contraception issues that were being decided on by the SCOTUS. He went on to say that just because this issue was decided on by the Court doesn't mean that employers can opt out of other medical proceedures. Alito based his decision on the "Religious Freedom and Restoration Act" which was signed into law by prez Billy Bob Clinton. He saw that under descriptions defined in that act corporations have to be considered as people too. Furthermore, Hobby Lobby was paying for 16 forms of contraceptives but they objected to paying for four drugs that caused abortions after conception.

Is that seriously your rebuttal? "Don't worry, SCOTUS wasn't applying its own ruling consistently, so it's okay!" Sorry, but special pleading is a fallacy no matter who's using it. Besides, my concern was always down to precedent; maybe companies won't be able to opt out based on the current ruling, but all they need to do is go to court. What's the argument here? What reasons can you give to privilege one baseless religious belief, held hypocritically by cherry picking from a religion and going against actual facts, over another? What good argument can you possibly give against my hypothetical situations?

Because to be clear: so far you haven't given any. Just saying "oh, this ruling only applies to birth control" isn't an argument.

What's also funny is that, while Hobby Lobby sure seems against paying for birth control that they say "causes abortions," they sure don't seem to mind getting paid by drug companies that make actual abortion drugs!

See how "closely held" those religious beliefs are when there's money in it?

[DeistPaladin]

The government forcing a company to pay for birth control (Hint: you can buy it for yourself) is not equal to hating women.

First of all, when you receive a benefit for working at a place, that isn't your boss' money. That's YOUR money. You earn it as part of your compensation package for the labor you provide. When your boss says insurance money can be spent for viagra but not for female care, as is often the case with these pious companies (my wife who worked in health insurance can offer you many stories along these lines), that is sexist. Regardless, your boss should not have the authority to butt into your life and dictate to you how your benefit money is spent.

Second, you missed the earlier Supreme Court ruling, that Christian terrorists are entitled to harass and threaten women who seek health care services at clinics that provide abortions. That's part of the package of the recent far right wing rulings by the SCOTUS.

Third, corporations are NOT people and the do NOT have religious faith. This twisted ruling swings the door wide for religious discrimination and harassment at the workplace.

[The Grand Nudger]

"Please consider this as part of your compensation package"
-unless we don't want to compensate you at some later date, for whatever silly reason pops into our addled minds.

[Ryantology]

No. It was a good week for the American people. It was just bad for the far-left.

That's an interesting way of putting it, in which "American people" are the over-privileged religious fucks and the "far left" are basically all women who work for private companies. If you don't think the ladies aren't paying attention to that, you haven't been paying attention to the Teahadist success rate in elections lately.

You're a ways out yet to be making predictions about who's going to be the next president. I think the country has had about enough of barack and anyone like him.

Oh, definitely. But, they country is even more sick of conservatives and anyone like them. We'll probably end up with one or two terms with Hillary, and whoever follows will almost certainly be even more liberal than she is. The right wing is too fractured to pose any serious challenge for the White House, and the Teahadist segment is far too extremist to ever have a chance.

The five justices of the SCOTUS did preserve one of our institutions through their decision.

Yes, the storied American tradition of Christians forcing women to behave the way they want.

Last I checked, women are still allowed access to contraceptives and abortions in this country. They just can't impose their wills on employers who have religious convictions against it and force them to pay for it.

Last I checked, medical benefits weren't a gift from the employer.

I have convictions against paying for wars, which is a zillion times worse than contraception, but this is a country in which the right have completely rejected any rational sense of priorities.

[A Theist]

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No. It was a good week for the American people. It was just bad for the far-left.

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[Jaysyn]

[Heywood]

Corporations are legal instruments used by people to facilitate the conducting of business. The people and their rights don't magically go away just because they incorporate. Lefties like to think they do when it suits them....but thinking it so doesn't make it so.

[DeistPaladin]

... far-left...

A bit of an aside but something I'm curious about...

Back in my conservative Republican days, when I used the term "far left", it had a very specific meaning. When I used it, I was referring to "communists" or "communism". And that word also had a specific meaning; it was not just a term used as a pejorative. It referred to an economic and political system where all property was owned by the community (government) and the wealth was (theoretically) distributed evenly to all members of society (or perhaps unevenly but "according to their needs", or such was the theory). I typically only called people "communist" or "socialist" when they used the self-label and/or when they advocated for such a system.

Speaking of "shrill", these days, "socialism" and "communism" have lost all meaning as words bandied around as a nearly meaningless insult. I seriously doubt many of the Teabaggers who plaster such words on badly spelled out protest signs even know what it means. I remember how one libertarian who posted on this forum once thought "socialism" was ANY government regulation of business or social safety net and that any society short of the 19th century Gilded Age was a "socialist society".

"Far left" is also overused to the point where it has no meaning. Obama is "far left", the same president who's best known for a health care reform born from The Heritage Foundation and advocated by previous GOP candidates like Bob Dole (liberals wanted Medicare For All), a president who's economic stimulus package was overburdened with useless tax cuts (liberals wanted an infrastructure reconstruction stimulus package and to raise taxes on the rich), a president who's surrounded himself with Wall Street insiders and has done little or nothing to regulate Wall Street (liberals wanted prosecution of the financial malfeasance that led to the crash of 2008), a president who expanded the drone war and the war in Afghanistan (liberals want to curtail drone strikes), etc. Obama, on close examination of his policies, is not even a liberal.

So I have a question:

What is "moderate left" to you? Please cite examples of moderate left political leaders.

Just wondering.

[Ryantology]

Oh good God! Here we go. Another false "War on Women" conspiracy contrived by the shrill and hysterical far-left.

Of course, people like you don't think anything is wrong with subjugating women, so it's natural that you're dismissive of the consequences of what you're doing. Until you have to pay for it, that is.

It was never any secret that the family owned Hobby Lobby is deeply rooted in the Christian faith. If any employee has serious issues with that and with their policy convictions against providing drugs which induce abortions, why work there? Forty eight of the fifty states in this country are "At Will" employment states. If employees don't like a company's policies they're free to start searching for other jobs where they'll be happier.

And when every corporation has the right to discriminate against them, what options will they have, then?

Mid-terms are coming in a few months and I say that the Republicans have a very good chance to re-take the Senate and to add even more seats to the House. This country doesn't feel confident and secure about their about their future with barack and the left.

They may retake Congress this year. Maybe not. If they take the Senate, they'll have two years to show America just how useless Republican government is. In 2016, the Senate will swing right back right along with the White House.

No. Preserving the Constitutional right of religious liberty. Companies who have religious convictions against abortions will not be forced to pay for them.

I don't recall the Constitution guaranteeing companies any kind of rights at all.

Last I checked, it's always been the employer who decides on the terms of the medical plans they offer, unless otherwise negotiated in union contracts. If medical benefits are a major concern for people seeking work then they should look for jobs with companies that offer plans they can be happy with.

Last I checked, the employee earns those benefits as a part of their pay, which is now being withheld from certain people for an entirely arbitrary reason.

I I have convictions against paying for wars too, as probably everybody does. But we don't live in a kind of bubble world where far-left naivity is going to make it safe enough for our country not to have a prepared military.

We live in a world in which our military spending is vastly greater than is justifiable for national defense.

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What is "moderate left" to you? Please cite examples of moderate left political leaders.

Just wondering.

That's always a tricky question to ask a wingnut, because they don't even understand the paradigm. Can't think of a single one that admits, for instance, the fact that fascism is an extreme right-wing ideology.

In any case, if you think Obama is a socialist or a Marxist, your idea of a 'moderate leftist' is John Boner or Eric Cantor.