IANAL. However. It seems deeply weird to me that there is a case in which a corporation is claiming a religious exemption to a law. Am I missing something?
According to my 'sincerely held flagellant beliefs', all of my companies employees are subject to corporal punishment. Spare the rod, spoil the intern. Have at you, Antonin Scalia.
It would be odd if businesses get religious freedom but there are silver linings. My business will be a member of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegeta and give out DMT trips. And the law can't do shit about it because the Roberts SCOTUS has already said that it's legit http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/SupremeCourt/story?id=1644314&page=1
Yeah, but I passed up the cheap laff. This time. To me, the notion that a corporation can have religious beliefs is something you'd see in a Star Trek episode, where the Enterprise comes upon a strange world with strange customs that are actually an analogy for something happening on Earth. Like the one where the two Frank Gorshins were condemned to wrestle for all eternity. Here's the thing. Corporations are people when it comes to due process. They are corporations when it comes to campaign contributions (even BETTER than people, since they have more rights in this arena.) I want some local DA to propose the death penalty for a corporation. Or maybe jail time; put up a barbed wire fence around all of their property. Isn't it totally dystopian that corporations get more rights and fewer responsibilities and real people aren't getting the same deal? (Arguably people are getting the reverse, given recent changes in bankruptcy law and privacy law.) It really does feel like a work of allegorical fiction to me, but it's reality.
Well I don't think the argument is the corporation, but the people that run the corporation, they are the people. Can some one run a business and apply his religious believes into the way the corporation runs or can the government force them to do something that violates their religious ideas. Is an easy answer for me, but that is because I am not into superstition.
My favorite conservative publication has weighed in: Even If Hobby Lobby Wins, We Lose I personally hope that Hobby Lobby loses, but I can't help but the admire the fervor with which many conservatives are rallying behind the religious rights of a soulless corporate entity that doesn't hesitate to support other soulless entities who engage in the practices that they find so offensive -- and worse.
It'll be a hoot when al-Jazeera News figures out how to manipulate a win for Hobby Lobby (if it wins.)
The real fun is what would happen after a Hobby Lobby win. Every pious boss would bum rush the courthouse to assert religious exemptions for every kind of crazy belief you've never heard of before. It would no longer be just Christians and birth control. It would be every religion bringing all their arcane scriptural dictates before some judge and demanding that they be applied to the law. After all, first amendment, ya know. If Hobby Lobby can get theirs why can't we? I can't wait for this circus to come to town. Bring on the clown show. I soooo want to see this parade of fools just so I can laugh my ass off.
Looking at this case, I can't even figure out why it got as far as the Supreme Court (or why they'd even consider it). HL used to provide this coverage for free before ACA (except IUDs because they misunderstand science) It's obviously not a moral or religious argument, it's strictly political. If HL wins, I demand Exxon, GE, and Goldman Sachs (amongst many others) immediately be arrested and jailed - if you have personal religious rights, you have personal legal responsibility and can be given the death penalty. On the plus side, when we let all the pot smokers out of prison, we won't leave the prisons empty, we can replace the inmates with hundreds of Boards of Directors, Executives, and I suppose even low-level corporate employees - hard to say who in the company would do the actual jail time They'd probably change the laws to only jail the minimum wage employees. If HL loses, I guess the company's eternal soul is going straight to hell
Good catch. There's room for common ground between the left and religious conservatives on economic issues; that would require the left to abandon Clinton/Obama-style pro-business centrism and rediscover the moral dimension to economic matters.
Corporations are people, ultimately. And in terms of behavior, privately held corporations in particular will be an extension of the people who own it and run it and make the decisions. That is true of HL as much as it was true of myself when I was a corporation. (I stopped being one last year). I was a small vendor in the Arts and Crafts industry and HL used to be one of my big customers. The company grew very fast but is family owned and still ran like a small company. They were known in the industry as very quirky people, but brilliant merchandisers. Deeply religious, they closed their stores on Sundays, did not want to have any bar codes on their products, and tended to buy bulk merchandise over packaged items, which I thought was very smart. (Most of their competitors like Michaels and ACMoore would spend a lot on packaging and design, as do chain stores in most industries, but I always felt buyers of craft items look past that much more than the typical consumer, and Hobby Lobby -it seemed to me- recognize that, and got a competitive advantage from it). Back when I was doing business with them they had an excellent reputation for paying on time - and based on personal experience I can vouch for how they always payed me on time, unlike most big chains who jerked the little guys with their payment terms and had a 'take it or leave' attitude if we complained. HL also had a reputation for treating their employees well and paying them better than the competition. On the other hand, they did buy lots of goods from overseas factories that payed low wages -not sure to what extent they checked the conditions of the factories. They also were not particularly loyal to vendors. If they could find something a bit cheaper they'd dump my products without notice, which for a small vendor can be a huge problem when they're such a big volume buyer who requires us to keep a high volume of stock for them. (But that's typical of large chains, they expect a lot from their vendors but don't really give a shit about the viability of small vendors.) Overall, though, I would say I got the impression that they were honest in trying to follow their religious beliefs even when it put them at a competitive disadvantage. They also were reputed to be very generous with charities, both humanitarian and religious charities. Based on my exposure to them I would think that their concerns -whether valid or not from a legal standpoint, which is what the SCOTUS will have to determine- are legitimately based on their genuine religious beliefs and not on political factors.
They are collectives of people, which isn't the same as possessing personhood. Anyway... http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSt...s-birth-control-makers-23164953?pt=BureoF3GVB The company leading the legal challenge against birth control coverage under the new health care law offers its workers a retirement plan that includes investments in companies making contraceptive and abortion drugs. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. has a 401(k) plan featuring several mutual funds investing in pharmaceutical firms that produce intrauterine birth control devices, emergency contraceptive pills and drugs used in abortion procedures, according to Labor Department documents and a review of fund portfolios. Hobby Lobby and the Green family that owns it say their religious beliefs prohibit them from offering health coverage for contraceptive drugs and devices that can work after conception. The retailer and others have sued the Obama administration, challenging the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employers provide coverage for all approved forms of birth control, including the morning-after pill and similar drugs that may work after an egg has been fertilized.
So, why even become a corporation if people and corporations are the same thing? Corporations are just people with no responsibility if they do something that harms people? Seems we should remove that protection if corporations are people. (not that we shouldn't anyway for "corporations" of 1, that's just dumb (for the rest of us, not that guy)) I would imagine there were differences between "you" and "your company" - but sometimes with small companies (which HL is NOT) that line gets blurred. Well, it is there, the people running a corporation (even if it's just 1) are NOT the corporation, they are simply people or a person within that artificial company construct. A company does not believe in anything but money (aka speech speaking of dumb/illogical SCOTUS decisions) and its existence (which came to be without a "creator").
I became a corporation in order to protect myself and my family from the types of financial risks that I needed to take in order to conduct business. Being a corporation was a legal status I had, like being a married man. I took that step so I could for example take a step like buying a warehouse, without the risk of losing my home and all my personal assets if my business failed. But I was still a person making the decisions, right or wrong.
Oh horror! On top of generous health benefits and pay packages Hobby Lobby also offers their employees a 401k with mutual fund choices. What hypocrites. I'm taking my floral arrangement business to Michael's.
Poke salad plucked from behind your outhouse does not qualify as a floral arrangement, Pim. Hobby Lobby probably doesn't stand for anything you believe in other than raising a stink over the Negro in the White House. They're the best place in town to find model cars and planes (short of hobby shops, which tend to overcharge), but I quit shopping there once I found out how much more important they seem to think Sunday is than other days people might use to observe the Sabbath or go fishing or whatever. That was before my nation's president took office, and I wouldn't be returning even if he'd lost.
Que? I haven't even weighed in on this topic. I just find it amusing that you on the left vilify HL without realizing the generosity and benies they bestow on their employees. As for your childish diatribe, our President would be proud and he'd note that apparently someone had sold you a stinkburger. Meanwhile I'm sure Hobby Lobby will find a way to slog on without your model car business (by the way, quit sniffing the glue).
you don't understand even a little bit exactly what they're being "vilified" for at all, do you? The generous benefits besides the one specific one that is an issue almost makes their pearl-clutching even more baseless and ridicule-worthy. The content of some of them, even more so. Hell, they're so generous they used to offer the same exact coverage they are now saying is an insult to their tender sensibilities and an affront to America itself! *gasp* They are typical "religious liberties" seekers, hypocrite scum.