Religious Liberty Under Threat in North Carolina... Under North Carolina law, a minister who officiates a marriage ceremony between a couple with no valid marriage license is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor and can be thrown in jail for 45 days. And since gay marriage is illegal in North Carolina, that means any minister who dares celebrate a gay union in his church may face jail time. I’m not certain why Ross Douthat, Ramesh Ponnuru, Mollie Hemingway, and other vociferous conservative defenders of religious liberty aren’t vocally outraged about this fact. Nor am I certain why, if religious freedom is truly one of the most cherished values of American conservatism, the religious right wasn’t incensed when Unitarian ministers in New York had to risk arrest while performing commitment ceremonies under a similar statute in 2004. Surely a vision of religious liberty that would allow a storeowner to turn away gays at the door would encompass the basic principle of allowing houses of worship to honor lifelong commitments they deem worthy of solemnization in the eyes of God. Actually, there’s an obvious reasons why conservatives aren’t clamoring to endorse the UCC’s lawsuit: The battle cry of “religious liberty” is only valuable to the American right insofar as it protects their own values—like animus toward gay people or rejection of reproductive rights. Just as, for many conservatives, corporate freedom extends to bosses who deny birth control but not to companies that support progressive causes, religious freedom in the hands of the right is really a term of art, or perhaps a dog whistle. So long as a religion dictates that, say, you refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, your religious liberty gets a hearty cheer of approval from conservatives. But when your religion leads you to perform a commitment ceremony for a gay couple that is part of your congregation, the right’s howls for liberty fall deafeningly silent. So far, it looks like another "religious liberty for me, but not for thee situation. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/...orth_carolina_which_forbids_gay_marriage.html
If Hobby Lobby is a Christian organization through the cultural choice of its owner doesnt that make the Clippers a slumlord-racist organization as well? Couldnt the Clippers be held liable for the actions of its owner? Wouldnt a Hobby Lobby victory end the Corporate-Veil by making the organization simply an extension of the owner and vice versa? And on a darker note...If there is one person whos sudden disappearance into a sinkhole would most improve the State of the Nation it has to be Scalia. The guy cant even remember the facts of his own majority decisions. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/antonin-scalia-error-supreme-court-dissent-epa
Please. There are millions ahead of him, thousands in DC alone. A corrected error, as the kinked article notes. Crucify him!
And the flood gates are open... http://www.salon.com/2014/05/07/hobby_lobby_style_drama_ensnares_jewish_elementary_school/ Under the New Deal National Labor Relations Act, workers who’ve won legal union recognition have the right to bargain collectively whether their boss wants to or not. But — echoing recent controversy over religious exemptions from the Americans with Disabilities Act, the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act and Obamacare’s contraception mandate — Perelman argues that under a 1979 Supreme Court case, being a religious school exempts it from having to negotiate. The American Federation of Teachers disagrees, and has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board. (Perelman did not respond to a Friday inquiry.) /quote
Only, per the article, they are not claiming any religious objection to collective bargaining- they just don't wanna anymore... Hard to see how the Hobby Lobby case has any similarity? Or how whatever court this goes to will mask their laughter...
So. lets say a corporation is entitled to behave in accordance with the emotional vagaries of its owner. Does that mean the Clippers are entitled to mismanage slum buildings because thats what Sterling does? Are corporations privileged to act in the personality of the owner just so far as he can get away with being whatever kind of anti-social dick he is?
How Christian of HL! http://aattp.org/schools-to-benefit...mpany-lied-to-consumers-about-fake-discounts/
They call it the Almighty Dollar because god says its okay to get as much as you can however you can, you know If they really wanted to punish HL, they'd make them give the ripped-off schools gift cards to a different supplier, not give them HL gift cards to turn around and give back to them for more overpriced crap.
a) you don't know that it's overpriced and b) you don't know that the quality is inferior to Staples because you've never been in a HL
a) the courts said it was overpriced, hence them having to give gift cards to make up the difference b) I didn't make that judgement in my post, but I actually have been in one, so There's one right next to one of the liquor stores in town, I popped in to see what the fuss was about, seems like a Ben Franklin with more lighting and fewer customers. It's a crap location though which is why the HL building is not a Food Lion any more.
on the 'you've never been in one', i stand corrected. as to the 'overpriced' issue, i don't think you fully comprehend the legal substance: because HL had run an ad with a sale price for 52 consecutive weeks, the idea that the offered items were a barbain was false. the price was not a 'sale' price because a purchaser could get the item(s) at that price at any time.
yeah, I get that, it seems pretty simple. The goods were over-priced, i.e.; not really on sale as falsely advertised.
no, you don't get it. the regular price may have been 99 cents and they have been reduced to 94 cents, which is what anyone would pay at any outlet, but HL presented the price as a reduction, but it was the "regular" price. i don't believe the offered price was more than one would pay at Staples', but the deception was that items were cheaper than normal.
Or maybe you don't get it because you seem to try too hard to justify whatever it is that this company does. They lied, they cheated, they got caught. They sort of got punished a little. Maybe they'll stop lying and cheating. More likely they'll use more clever misleading wording instead.
i'm not trying to justify their conduct. i'm correcting your false statements. and saying they cheated is wrong, as well. they engaged in deceptive advertising practices. they misrepresented their price as a 'sale', when it was no different from their standard price. that's a false inducement, and they deserved to be punished.
SCOTUS sides with Hobby Lobby, because corporations are people too. http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/30/politics/scotus-obamacare-contraception/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
You seem to be going out of your way to defend HL, but I can't really say that I'm surprised by that.
i didn't defend them. i said that they deserved to be punished for their unlawful advertising practices. i said that to characterize their goods as "overpriced" seemed false. i also said that i thought that using the word "cheating" was inaccurate. what is clearly true is that they portrayed the products to be a special bargain when they were not. that is deceptive. if being deceptive is always cheating, then i'm wrong about the choice of words. i am currently (re)reading Language In Action by Hayakawa. i read it so long ago that it's pretty much a new read. word choice is a touchy issue. we get involved in arguments about language, diction, semantics all the time. we are the only species i know of that can talk about speech or writing, not just speak or write. i think my way of parsing things is pretty good, but most of us have the same view of our own capacity to define and use both written and spoken language, parse our communications. i'm not interested in taking a poll on every word choice here in bigsoccer, but i would like to think that we can give a little grace to differences of opinion of what words denote and connote.