Christian conservatives call the Supreme Court ruling granting three family-owned businesses the right to refuse to pay for certain forms of contraception for their employees based on their beliefs a victory for religious freedom.
In actuality, it opens a dangerous precedent and ignores the hypocrisy of the businesses that fought for the right to deny reproductive health care resources for female employees. One of the businesses in particular, Hobby Lobby, has some inconsistencies worth noting.
According to Mother Jones, “Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012 — three months after the company’s owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions.”
Basically, Hobby Lobby has poured millions into funding the contraception makers whose products they’re protesting on the grounds of religious beliefs. But wait, there’s more! Hobby Lobby also depends on overseas child labor to produce many of its goods.
The Week, an online political publication, wrote, “a huge number of American companies outsource labor to China, and thus help prop up this shameful status quo. But very few of these American companies simultaneously trumpet themselves as ‘Christian businesses,’ arguing in court that providing employees with health insurance covering contraceptives violates their religious beliefs.”
Sorry, we missed the part in the New Testament where Jesus said, “Let the children come to me...with tacky, dirt-cheap horseshoe candle holders they made for $9.77 per day.”
NBC stated that the burden of paying for necessary contraceptive measures won’t be automatically placed upon female workers — women enrolled in the health care insurance marketplace may still access preventative health care services and contraceptives. But the ruling, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg commented in her dissent, opens the door to a dangerous debate: How will the Supreme Court decide in the future, as a result of this ruling, which religious beliefs are “worthy of accommodation”? The overwhelming criticism of the Hobby Lobby case is that it’s only a matter of time before businesses begin employing the religious freedom argument to get out of paying for vaccinations or blood transfusions.
So this message, then, is for all “Christian” business owners who choose to employ “religious freedom” only when it’s convenient: You will not get out of providing necessary health care measures for your employees so easily. American citizens are angry, and a White House spokesman confirmed yesterday that the Obama administration is prepared to take action.
So what can you, as a concerned citizen, do? Protest outside your local Hobby Lobby. A Gainesville Hobby Lobby is scheduled to open on 6111 W. Newberry Road, Suite B on Aug. 1, and already, a peaceful protest is scheduled. More information is available on the open Facebook event, titled “Gainesville Hobby Lobby Grand Opening Protest.”
Religious freedom is, of course, a core value in our society: It’s the reason America was founded. But, as Nancy Pelosi said, “It’s just not her boss’ business.”
[A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 7/1/2014 under the headline "Hobby Lobby case filled with hypocrisy"]
