Dang it. It’s happened again. An entity I really like has gone completely haywire politically. The older I get, the less I can stand politics.
I really like Hobby Lobby, too. They have Sharpies on a Keyring.
We’re so predictable: when the Natalie Maines, formerly of the Dixie Chicks, used her right to free speech a little too freely, everybody wigged out and turned enjoying “Cowboy, Take Me Away” into a patriotic Line in the Sand. Since I didn’t smash my copies of the Chicks’ CDs to smithereens, in the eyes of some folks I’m obviously a traitorous socialist who should be kept away from small animals and impressionable children.
Then, there was Chic-fil-A, who turned waiting in their ridiculous drive-thru line for those delicious chicken nuggets into a protest march about LBGT rights. Sigh. I’m not making a political statement when I go to Chic-fil-A. I just like their food.
Now, Hobby Lobby’s gone and made wandering through fantastic aisles of crafty turpentine-scented marvels a political statement about one’s stance on women’s health issues.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not joining the picketing herds on this one, or any of the other Attacks on Traditional Values Requiring My Immediate and Forceful Temper Tantrum, either: I’ll crank my “Home” cd while I wait in the Chic-fil-A drive-thru line for some waffle fries and that crack, er, avocado lime ranch dressing on my way to buy some new pens/embroidery thread/canvases/drawing pads/fabric/crochet needles at my local Hobby Lobby. The political leanings of businesses don’t dictate my patronization; the quality of their goods and service does. (For the record, my position on the issues raised by these companies’ positions differs from theirs.)
For those of you who have been spending all of your time trying to build Hogwarts in Minecraft or those of you avoiding the news because you simply can’t stand to watch it, the SCOTUS heard two cases: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Burwell, both regarding the provision in the Affordable Care Act which requires most employers to cover the full range of contraception in their health care plans at no cost to female workers. The court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, giving the company the right to opt out of the birth control mandate in the ACA on the basis of religious objection.
Religious and pro-life conservatives everywhere are praising Jesus for answering their prayers, but I find the decision pretty disturbing, as did Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who wrote the biting dissent. I wonder if it ever dawned on the Greens and the Hahns (the owners of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga) that by taking away this option for their employees, they are in effect actually increasing the probability that women in their employ will seek abortions because of the likelihood of a rise in unwanted pregnancies.
Ginsburg’s concern about the reaches of this law are sobering. To ensure that the government does not promote one religion over another, the same option to opt out of providing insurance for health care services (psychiatry and vaccinations, just to name a couple) to which the owners of the company have a religious objection must be given to all faiths. Ginsburg called the decision a step into a minefield, and I don’t think she’s far off the mark. From her dissent:
“In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
It’s sort of funny, in the really sad well-that’s-the-world-we-live-in sense of the word, that Hobby Lobby’s position on contraception when birth control devices are making the company money seems to be enthusiastic financial endorsement, to the tune of some $73 million, but when they are called upon by the ACA to spend money to provide insurance for their employees, and the companies they choose to use to comply with that mandate offer contraception to their female patients, they suddenly go all Sanctity-of-Life on everybody. That dichotomy makes questioning their motives not only legitimate, but important.
The other dissenting justices brought up an additional sobering point for people concerned with the far-reaching invasive arms of the Federal Government (from this article in the Huffington Post):
“Justices Sotomayor and Kagan asked whether companies like Hobby Lobby should be allowed to refuse to cover procedures like blood transfusions and vaccines, or to ask for exemptions to things like anti-discrimination and minimum wage laws, if they had religious objections to those policies.
“Everything would be piecemeal, nothing would be uniform,” Kagan warned.
Private and personal health decisions should not be regulated by the national government. How, pray tell, can the government know what is in my best interests, or those of any other woman, in this regard, and be certain enough of that knowledge to pass a law about it?”
For those of you who haven’t had a chance to carefully scrutinize Ginsburg’s dissent, this lovely song should suffice: