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Bjorn Against

Bjorn Against's Journal
Bjorn Against's Journal
July 1, 2014

This is what I find most disturbing about the Hobby Lobby case...

I have not been posting much recently but I needed to say something about the Hobby Lobby case because I think there is a huge elephant in the room that the media coverage of the case seems to be avoiding.

All five of the "justices" who voted in Hobby Lobby's favor are members of the Roman Catholic Church which is a church that is well known for opposing insurance coverage for contraceptives. All five of them voted for their church's position, but they explicitly excluded the religious beliefs of faiths other than their own from having the same "religious freedom" they claim Hobby Lobby should be able to impose on their employees.

The Supreme Court explicitly said that this ruling is limited to the issue of contraceptives and does not apply to other medical treatments that some other religions oppose such as blood transfusions and vaccines. Now don't get me wrong I absolutely do not think employers should get exemptions from covering blood transfusions or vaccines, like birth control those are basic forms of health care that everyone should have access to. What I do have a problem with is that the Supreme Court decided it can pick and choose which religious beliefs can get their followers exemptions from providing health care to their employees and which ones can not, and it just so happens that they chose their own religious belief as one whose followers do not have to follow the same rules that everyone else has to follow.

This is something that I think needs to be called out, when a major Supreme Court ruling on religion is decided entirely by members of one religion that is a problem. When their ruling provides protections for their own religious belief while explicitly excluding the same protection for beliefs that they do not hold that is an even bigger problem yet. It is extremely dangerous to our democracy to have five unelected men who have the power to make decisions that can alter the course of history, these are men who have the power to make a decision that benefits their personal religion over other beliefs be they religious or secular and there is little we can do to hold them accountable for making such a blatantly biased decision.

Let's face it, the Supreme Court is an undemocratic institution and by using the courts to carve out a special exemption for people who share their religious views in opposition to contraception they have shown their contempt for equal protection under the law. I really think people need to start talking about removing these guys from the bench, there is no reason these people should be free from calls for accountability when they use the court to allow them to impose their own religious views on to others.

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Member since: Mon May 22, 2006, 07:07 PM
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