Monday, June 30, 2014

Let's Court Disaster!

And no, man-boobs do not count.
Today the Supreme Court, well some of it anyway, found in favor of Hobby Lobby: our nation's #1 supplier of pipe cleaners, glue sticks and moral direction. Hobb Lobb, and several other Christian-owned companies objected to having to pay for certain forms of contraception as required by the Affordable Care Act. Care to take a guess as to which justices dissented? Oh go on, I'll give you a hint: three of them actually have the lady parts most directly associated with the ruling.

I don't have a caption for this,
and it doesn't need one.
Justice Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the dissenting opinion, points out that the decision allows:

"commercial enterprises, including corporations...[to] opt out of any law (saving only tax law) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs."

seriously, look at the look on her face

"Yeah Cheryl, I know what it says,
look, Dad had anger issues back then..."
It kind of sounds like the ruling lets employers get away with whatever bullshit they want as long as they say their actions are religiously motivated. It's a get out of lawsuits free card. Uncomfortable with contraceptives? God (and Monty Python) says that every sperm is sacred (Genesis 38:8-10), so today's ruling has you covered. Don't want to put in a ramp for people in wheelchairs? Just point out Leviticus 21:18, God basically hates the handicapped. Does your store have a shoplifting problem? I'm pretty sure you can chop their hands off, it's somewhere in the old testament.

It's just an example. I have the utmost
respect for Baast and her worshipers.
Please don't lay a curse on me.
Look, I'm not saying that Hobby Lobby and the other the companies involved in the suit set out to screw over their employees (although that's totally what they're doing), I'm just suggesting that maybe the Court set a scary precedent today. One that hurts workers and may eventually come back to bite employers and religious liberty in general in the proverbial ass (there's a proverb about asses, isn't there?). At some point someone's going to ask questions like: What exactly constitutes a religious belief? And: are all religions covered or just the big ones? And, of course: my cat just died, can I force my employees to shave their eyebrows?

Holy shit, right? Not to get all slippery slope on you here, but isn't this like a really slippery slope? I mean, how do you measure religious sincerity? Is there a meter or something? Should there be? Is there still time for the Court to issue a writ of Do-Over on this one? What's Latin for mulligan?
According to the PKE Meter, this guy sincerely believes that he is
Vinz Clortho, Key Master of Gozer. Does this mean we should we
ask his opinion about the morning after pill? No? Ok. Shut up then.

No comments:

Post a Comment