Monday, June 30, 2014

By Saying Hobby Lobby Is Not About Discrimination, the Supremes Say It's About Women Having Sex


Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg forced Justice Alito's hand in her dissent. Alito took
the bait, hook, line and sinker. Now we know it's about sex. Good on ya, Sam!

If any women in the U.S. still believe conservatives have their backs, please note that conservatives, more than anything, don't want you to be on your backs or in any position where birth control would be handy.

The Supreme Court has, with its Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby decision, made it clear that the conservative vision for America -- celebrated broadly by the Republican Party -- doesn't include freedom to have sex while avoiding pregnancy. And if we ever thought that Hobby Lobby was about religious beliefs (other than don't have sex, life's a, bitch, and then you die), we now know that it is not. Here's Slate, laying it down:
What kind of laws might violate religious employers’ religious principles? After birth control coverage, the most obvious candidate is an LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance. Liberals have been fretting for months that a pro-Hobby Lobby ruling could undermine such laws, allowing any purportedly religious employer to violate them with impunity. The question suddenly emerged as a dire threat as florists, bakers, and photographers have claimed a religious right to break state law to discriminate against gay couples, and state after state proposed their own riffs on RFRA. The issue became a minor cause célèbre among conservative commentators, and, as the Hobby Lobby ruling approached, gay rights advocates braced for the apocalypse.
But on Monday morning, the apocalypse didn’t come. In fact, quite the opposite: In its ruling for Hobby Lobby, the court—in an opinion authored by arch-conservative Justice Samuel Alito—explicitly stated that RFRA could not be used as a “shield” to “cloak … discrimination in hiring” as a “religious practice to escape legal sanction.” RFRA doesn’t permit employers to break a law when there is a compelling government interest backing that regulation, and, according to Alito, the government “has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the workforce.”
Cat's out of the bag, Alito. The government has a compelling interest -- in spite of deeply held religious beliefs that gayness is evil in the eyes of the Lord -- to prevent discrimination in the workplace, but it sure as hell does not have a compelling interest in women's health.

In fact, it's quite the opposite, according to Alito. Remember, women need a doctor's help in the form of a prescription or a medical procedure -- such as with IUDs -- to access most of these preventive-medicine, birth-control services. The good Justice Alito, and by extension the rest of the Court's conservatives, makes it clear that there is no government interest in helping women have more sex. If they choose to have sex at all, in fact, pregnancy is now the more likely result. So, the government, it would seem, has a compelling interest in assuring that either women curtail their sexual activity or have more babies. Conservatives for the win!

So, go ahead, women, vote for Republicans. Just stay off of your backs and avoid drugstores. Instead, get a hobby. And, of course, feed that hobby at the local Hobby Lobby. That's surely in your self-interests, too.

With the McCullen v. Coakley decision, the Court said have at it, protesters.
Rumble with the abortionists! With Hobby Lobby, the Court said no to birth
control, too. Awwh, women, quit your grumbling! Religion is good for you.

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