How seriously awful is the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision?<\/p>\n
So bad that Linda Stasi, a columnist in the Daily News, ranted about it.<\/p>\n
What is most remarkable \u2212 and ominous for the right wing suppress-your-women brigade in this country \u2212 is that Stasi is not a liberal. I trust I’m not being unfair in my interpretation but I usually disagree with her point of view. She often irritates me, taking knee-jerk, superficially reasoned swipes at a variety of political figures of the Democratic persuasion. (See rest of her column, linked below, as an example.)<\/p>\n
She’s not Ann Coulter but she’s not not Gail Collins either.<\/p>\n
So her column about the Hobby Lobby decision should be a warning to anyone who believes this SCOTUS decision will not have serious repercussions in the upcoming election. Because Stasi’s anger is the loud voice of women throughout the country \u2212 and women are in the majority and women vote.<\/p>\n
Here’s her column: Stasi: The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision is a step back for women – NY Daily News<\/a>.<\/p>\n Stasi brings up a point I hadn’t realized. Although the Hobby Lobby decision now allows corporate owners with religious beliefs to deny their women employees insurance for certain forms of contraception, apparently no such religious sensitivities govern Cialis and Viagra.<\/p>\n Five male Supreme Court justices, all Catholic, decided this case against women but left male sex enhancement drugs alone. It’s bitterly amusing, sure, but it’s also egregious hypocrisy, isn’t it? I thank Stasi for mentioning it.<\/p>\n And I also thank her for this, her last comment:<\/p>\n The bottom line? Insurance companies will pay for impotent men to impregnate women who don\u2019t want to have children but can\u2019t afford birth control.<\/em><\/p>\n Noncompliant females will be stripped of their burqas and stoned to death.<\/em><\/p>\n That’s right: as I’ve been noting frequently, fundamentalist Christianity has ugly similarities to fundamentalist Islam. They both intend to reign sovereign over their women and suppress our human rights.<\/p>\n But just in case you think I’m being too hard on Christianity, the New York Times printed a series of letters regarding the Hobby Lobby decision, only one of which did not use terms like “outrageous” and “wrong-minded.” This stand-alone opinion was from a man named Nathan J. Diament, a spokesman for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.\u00a0 Here is the letter in its entirety:<\/p>\n To the Editor:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Your July 1 editorial \u201cThe Justices Endorse Imposing Religion on Employees<\/a>\u201d finds the Supreme Court\u2019s decision<\/a> in the Hobby Lobby case \u201cdeeply dismaying\u201d because the ruling allows owners of closely held, for-profit companies the \u201cright to impose their religious views on employees.\u201d It would have been far more troubling for the court to rule against Hobby Lobby.<\/em><\/p>\n The First Amendment\u2019s guarantee of the \u201cfree exercise\u201d of religion is precisely to prevent the government from imposing its views on Americans of faith, absent the most compelling need to do so. That\u2019s why a virtually unanimous Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act<\/a>, and President Bill Clinton signed it.<\/em><\/p>\n As the high court\u2019s majority pointed out, there are many other ways that the Obama administration can ensure women widespread access to contraceptives and other health services without an infringement on the conscientious beliefs of business owners.<\/em><\/p>\n The positions of religious minorities and dissenters are often unpopular, but they deserve constitutional protection.<\/em><\/p>\n Do I have to stick pins into the numerous errors of fact and reason in this letter? One obvious one: Hobby Lobby owners are not<\/em> members of a religious minority, nor are they “dissenters,” whatever Mr. Diament thinks he means by that.<\/p>\n And let me shout out Mr. Diament’s warning: Orthodox Jewish-owned companies will now avail themselves of this decision, too.<\/p>\n I’d say that the Supreme Five will go to hell for this decision, except since I have no belief in primitive religious imagery, I don’t believe in hell.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How seriously awful is the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision? So bad that Linda Stasi, a columnist in the Daily News, ranted about it. What is most remarkable \u2212 and ominous for the right wing suppress-your-women brigade in this country … Continue reading