SCOTUS Protects Religious Freedom/Sides with Hobby Lobby

[Alta Angel]

^^^Completely agree with your post.

I believe that this case will have far reaching implications that we haven't even considered yet. Blood transfusions and vaccinations violate the religious beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses. It is disturbing to think that those health care options could potentially mean increased out of pocket costs for me if my employer morally disagrees with those practices (provided the company meets the guidelines).

 

[firecracker]

I agree some people take bc for other reasons.

Yes like Uterian Fibroids.

 

[Belle Du Jour]

This is my last statement on this. First off, an employer does not pay for contraception. They buy into a plan that offers the participants the option of contraception. The employee then pays into the umbrella plan and then pays their copay. What women are asking for is a choice. If going out and getting health care without your employer was simple and painless we wouldn't have even discussed Obama care. God gives us choices and options everyday while leading and guiding us to what is right. Unfortunately instead of giving women the choice and opportunity to do as God leads then we will be forced to abide by our employers religious beliefs. Hobby Lobby may be the first but won't be the last. I believe we will see more of these issues pop up as more businesses are required to offer healthcare by law. And just because this ruling falls under your belief system doesn't mean that they all will.

Have you read the contraception mandate???

Women still have choice. They have the choice to go to the doctor, get a prescription and pay for the contraception.

 

[dicapr]

Have you read the contraception mandate??? Women still have choice. They have the choice to go to the doctor, get a prescription and pay for the contraception.

Yes. And I see that a woman who was raped would not be able to have Plan B covered under her insurance and would have to not only deal with rape but the added cost of paying emergency contraception out of pocket. And if she doesn't have the money (Hobby Lobby is a minimum wage job) she will then be faced a decision to abort or go through a unwanted pregnancy carrying her rapist child.

Their reasoning for not paying for IUDs doesn't make sense to me either. New IUDs have a progesterone and other hormones that affect ovulation just like BC pills-which is why many women don't have periods when they have them.

I also know that Hobby Lobby has no problem offering employees the opportunity to profit financially by including pharmaceutical companies that make birth control in their 401K portfolio.

I'm not trying to convince anyone to change their personal beliefs. I'm just pointing out a win for one group of believers is a lose for another. And the tide will not always fall in your favor. One day you may be at the mercy of a non-Christian's moral beliefs that could make financing your health care difficult and a burden.

 

[CarefreeinChicago]

Stop calling Hobby Lobby a Christian business
JONATHAN MERRITT | JUNE 17, 2014
"We're Christians," Hobby Lobby's president Steve Green proclaims, "and we run our business on Christian principles."

That is music to the ears of many conservative Christians, who rallied around Hobby Lobby when the retail chain argued at the Supreme Court that ObamaCare's contraception mandate unlawfully burdened their religious beliefs. But a closer look at Hobby Lobby's actual business practices reveals this claim to be as hollow as a flute. Turn over just about any trinket in a Hobby Lobby store and you'll find a gold oval stamped with "Made in China," a country that is one of the worst offenders of human dignity, unborn infant life, and economic justice anywhere in the world.

As such, those shiny stickers littering every Hobby Lobby from sea to shining sea are more than a statement about a product's geographical origin; they are also a stinging indictment against the way the retailer has sought to label itself.

Imagine for a moment a nation with nightmarish labor conditions, inadequate workplace regulation, and rampant child labor. You've just imagined 21st century China. Seventy thousand Chinese employees die every year in workplace accidents — that's roughly 200 humans snuffed out of existence every day.

Some provinces in China are raising their minimum wage standards. But don't rush to praise them. Starting this year in Shanghai, minimum wage is rising to only $293 per month — a paltry figure that is still the highest amount paid in all of mainland China. That's about $9.77 per day. If you were wondering how Hobby Lobby can sell wicker baskets for next to nothing, now you know.

The Bible is replete with calls for economic justice. Can you call yourself a "Christian business" when you leverage your profits to support an economic system that blatantly perpetuates injustice?

China is also the 20th worst in the world for child labor. Can you call yourself a "Christian business" when you support underage labor? Jesus, after all, taught that taking one's own life is preferable to harming a child.

And what of China's one-child policy, which disincentivizes having daughters to the point that it fuels an underground abortion industry? Data shows that 13 million abortions are performed in the country each year. About 35,000 infant lives are terminated in China every day, and 336 million abortions have taken place there over the last four decades. According to Steven Mosher of Population Research Institute, "most of those abortions have the character of a rape. That is, they were performed on women who were ordered, or even physically forced, to submit to the knife."

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, then, that China accounts for 19 percent of the global population, but 56 percent of the world's female suicides. Approximately 500 women take their own lives in China every day.

Though China somewhat relaxed its controversial 35-year-old policy recently, Max Fisher of The Washington Post has noted that the policy still leads to forced abortions — in addition to sterilizations and infanticide — and always will.

Now, of course, a huge number of American companies outsource labor to China, and thus help prop up this shameful status quo. But very few of these American companies simultaneously trumpet themselves as "Christian businesses," arguing in court that providing employees with health insurance covering contraceptives violates their religious beliefs. How can this ObamaCare mandate be so foul to Hobby Lobby executives, while they say very little about Chinese policies forcing women to have abortions against their wills? Is abortion wrong only when the terminated life is American?

The most glaring inconsistency between Hobby Lobby's ethical proclamations and its business decisions concerns the matter of religious liberty. The craft store chain is hailed by conservatives as standing up to Uncle Sam and fighting for religious freedom. Yet Hobby Lobby imports billions of dollars worth of bric-a-brac from a nation that denies 1.35 billion citizens freedom of worship.

If Hobby Lobby was concerned with religious freedoms — not just those of conservative American Christians — it would quit doing business in China.

Hobby Lobby reminds us why for-profit businesses should resist calling themselves "Christian." The free market is messy and complicated and riddled with hypocrisy. Conducting business in today's complex global economy almost ensures one will engage in behavior that is at least morally suspect from a Biblical standpoint.

If you want to call your business "Christian," by all means, go right ahead. But those who live by the label must die by it as well. You cannot call your business "Christian" when arguing before the Supreme Court, and then set aside Christian values when you're placing a bulk order for cheap wind chimes.

Every time you buy a decorative platter from Hobby Lobby with a Bible verse stamped across it, you have funded the company's fight against the HHS contraception mandate. But you're also sending a chunk of change to a country that forces people to abort their children, flouts basic standards of workplace dignity, and denies more than a billion people the right to worship.

 

[Belle Du Jour]

^ Typical media smoke and mirrors. Quite sad, actually.

 

[Shimmie]

^ Typical media smoke and mirrors. Quite sad, actually.

I agree, typical 'smoke and mirrors'.

Here's a factor about these reports and those who write / quote / post them. None of them could care less about those in China. They can 'drag' Hobby Lobby and/or other Christians into the 'smear', yet they are not putting forth neither a nickel nor a dime, let alone a copper wire, to help the poor citizens of these countries to be set free or to have a better life.

If it really means that much, then they too, must tow the line that they have drawn for Hobby Lobby, for they too are without validation. If they care so much about China, then let go of their cell phones, computers, ipads, tablets, cable networks, just to name a few.

Just about everything we use and own and consume is 'made in China', made in Japan, made in India, and the list goes on. It is far beyond any doubt the writers of these articles 'dragging' Hobby Lobby are the highest consumers.

Just saying. Just saying. Why retort with the report and yet not yield support? Just saying.

All of this fuss about birth control, you'd think Hobby Lobby is the only job source in this country. Get over it. It's high time our Faith has won it's day in court and it is a fair win. I praise God for more victories in this sinful society, for we have been made more than Conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It's high time that the courts show respect for our Faith...period. It's not okay to redefine how a Christian worships and honors God.

 

[Farida]

The hobby lobby case was actually decided on the grounds of whether or not the dept of HHS via Obamacare can pass a law that appears to violate the restoration of religious freedom act (RFRA). I am tired of people acting as if the supreme court was simply trying to decide whether or not women should get employer-sponsored birth control.

There is a standard to how courts interpret one law versus another and that was what was applied here.

 

[Blackpearl1993]

I agree, typical 'smoke and mirrors'.

Here's a factor about these reports and those who write / quote / post them. None of them could care less about those in China. They can 'drag' Hobby Lobby and/or other Christians into the 'smear', yet they are not putting forth neither a nickel nor a dime, let alone a copper wire, to help the poor citizens of these countries to be set free or to have a better life.

If it really means that much, then they too, must tow the line that they have drawn for Hobby Lobby, for they too are without validation. If they care so much about China, then let go of their cell phones, computers, ipads, tablets, cable networks, just to name a few.

Just about everything we use and own and consume is 'made in China', made in Japan, made in India, and the list goes on. It is far beyond any doubt the writers of these articles 'dragging' Hobby Lobby are the highest consumers.

Just saying. Just saying. Why retort with the report and yet not yield support? Just saying.

All of this fuss about birth control, you'd think Hobby Lobby is the only job source in this country. Get over it. It's high time our Faith has won it's day in court and it is a fair win. I praise God for more victories in this sinful society, for we have been made more than Conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It's high time that the courts show respect for our Faith...period. It's not okay to redefine how a Christian worships and honors God.

Amen! I couldn't have said it any better. I had no idea that the vast majority of our American population was employed by Hobby Lobby....come on now...no one is forced to work there! The family that owns/runs Hobby Lobby should have the freedom to stand on God's Word, just like other American citizens have the freedom to do what they wish with their bodies (although there are consequences for our choices and we will all answer to God for them). There are women who utilize birth control for reasons other than contraception, but that is not the vast majority. The vast majority use it to cover the sin of fornication or cut off the fruit that God desires to give within the covenant of marriage. And...despite what scientists would try to have us believe, if any thing interferes with the environment of the womb thereby preventing the implantation of an embryo (no form of birth control is 100% effective), then it most certainly is an abortifacient. It amazes me how people are so quick to believe almost any scientific report, yet not believe the Word of God. The inerrant Word of God!!! The Word of the same God who raised Jesus from the dead, parted the Red Sea, blessed Sarah in her elder years to become pregnant and give birth to a healthy baby, and who produced Jesus via a virgin birth. In fact, the very fact that Jesus came to spend time here on Earth via coming through the womb should make it extremely clear just how important babies, birth, and the womb is to God.

 

[Blackpearl1993]

I can respect your point of view. I don't agree but I can respect it. My point is that many people who are against BC and it's ability to enhance women's reproductive quality of life are more than happy to pay to enhance a mans quality of life. I don't think V.iagra has anything to do with being open to life. It is simply to aid men in having sex. I think people overlook the fact that women should not be put in situation to justify their health care choices to their employer. No one is policing men to ensure that e.rectile dis function drugs are only being used in the confines of marriage but we think it is reasonable for a woman to have to justify her need for BC.
They will be forced to reveal personal information about their health and then have a person make a decision about their treatment based on their religious beliefs rather than medical need. I am uncomfortable with that. Religious liberty should protect someone's ability to practice their religion but I feel that ruling is too one sides. What's next? If someone has a moral objection to blood transfusions should insurance not cover that or if they don't believe in anti-depressants should the mentally ill come out of pocket for their meds?

Ummm...there are many, many people who have to do this with Insurance Companies every day when their claims for various treatments are denied. So that issue is certainly not confined solely to companies that don't want to be forced to pay for medications that go against their Biblical beliefs.

 

[Shimmie]

Amen! I couldn't have said it any better. I had no idea that the vast majority of our American population was employed by Hobby Lobby....come on now...no one is forced to work there! The family that owns/runs Hobby Lobby should have the freedom to stand on God's Word, just like other American citizens have the freedom to do what they wish with their bodies (although there are consequences for our choices and we will all answer to God for them).

There are women who utilize birth control for reasons other than contraception, but that is not the vast majority.

The vast majority use it to cover the sin of fornication or cut off the fruit that God desires to give within the covenant of marriage.

And...despite what scientists would try to have us believe, if any thing interferes with the environment of the womb thereby preventing the implantation of an embryo (no form of birth control is 100% effective), then it most certainly is an abortifacient.

It amazes me how people are so quick to believe almost any scientific report, yet not believe the Word of God. The inerrant Word of God!!!

The Word of the same God ...

:Rose: who raised Jesus from the dead,
:Rose: parted the Red Sea,
:Rose: blessed Sarah in her elder years to become pregnant and give birth to a healthy baby, and
:Rose: who produced Jesus via a virgin birth.

:Rose: In fact, the very fact that Jesus came to spend time here on Earth via coming through the womb should make it extremely clear just how important babies, birth, and the womb is to God

.

God says "I AM that I AM" ...

He's not changing just because of those who do not like it.