For those of you not following the SCOTUS, the high court handed down a decision today that was met with great cheering by some and dreadful concern by others. From my perspective, it allows a specific type of company held by religious adherents to inflict their particular religious beliefs upon their employees.
Hobby Lobby can now deny birth control to their female employees due to their owners *belief* that birth control pill, IUDs, and hormone injections are abortifacients. This belief is held in opposition to what biology tells us about how the female body works. This targets only one group of employees - women. There is nothing the owners of the company withhold from their male employees.
Let's contrast this to where I work.
As best I can tell, my workplace is a privately held corporation owned by conservative Jews. The owners will cater kosher meals for lunch meetings off of an approved vendor list. However, they don't mandate that all the employees observe kosher or sabbath rules on site(I can bring my ham sandwich to work on Saturday). This company will even expense lunches out for employees at non-kosher restaurants - shrimp pizza for our team today!
So the question becomes, which employer is really more pious? Is it the one that inflicts their particular view of scripture on a set of employees, or is it the one that having had a history of persecution sets standards for themselves, but doesn't insist that the rest of the workers obey them as well?
Update:
Apparently Hobby Lobby was all too willing to let their and their employee's money grow with the suppliers of birth control.
1 comment:
This was a dumb decision by the SCOTUS, but I would like to point out that my understanding is that the decision dose NOT allow Hobby Lobby to deny birth control to women, it DOES allow Hobby Lobby to not pay for birth control for women.
I think female employees can still use birth control, but that Hobby Lobby won't pay for it.
Am I wrong on this? (Not trying to troll, just trying to understand)
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