Just when you thought the Supreme Court couldn’t sink any lower in its conservative white male support of corporations over the human beings they are supposed to represent, along comes this foolishness with Hobby Lobby. Their landmark ruling on that lawsuit means that your employer now has the right to impose his beliefs on your body. HOW DARE THEY???
The owners of Hobby Lobby have very strong religious convictions. Good for them. They have decided that contraceptives are a sin. Fine. Then they shouldn’t take contraceptives.
But they’ve taken the concept one step further. They’ve decided that they have the right to impose their beliefs on the at least 15,000 women that they employ nationwide. Thanks to the Supreme Court, they are now allowed to provide these women with health insurance that will not cover birth control.
This won’t stop these women from using birth control. I guarantee you that. But it will impose a financial hardship, and I have no doubt that Hobby Lobby pays its employees pathetically, as that seems to be the retailer trend these days. In many cases it will cause these women to seek out more affordable but less effective alternatives, and this will impact their health and the very structure of their families.
Here’s what no one seems to be saying. If my boss tried to have a conversation with me about my health choices, if he tried to give me advice on what I should do when I’m off the clock, if he even dared to suggest that my private life were any of his business whatsoever, I’d sit him down, look him straight in the eye, calmly inform him that I’m a grown-ass woman and he is not my father, and then I’d tell him to shut his pie hole.
And that should be the end of the conversation. There should never have been a single court in the land that would view this as a legitimate lawsuit. It is a sad day in this country when there is legal sanction to treat employees as if they are children. You pay me, and part of that pay is in the form of health insurance, in exchange for my hard work. A fair trade. It has been that way since the emancipation proclamation. What I do after receiving that compensation, even if it involves sacrificing goats under the light of the full moon, has nothing whatsoever to do with you.
One thing is for certain: I won’t ever spend another penny in a Hobby Lobby. And since the vast majority of their customers are women, I hope all women with sense will do the same thing. If I were a competing retailer, I’d take advantage of this opportunity to make it perfectly clear that I, unlike Hobby Lobby, respect a woman’s right to make her own decisions. Now THAT store would have my undying loyalty.
And believe you me, if there were a way to also boycott the Supreme Court, I’d be doing that, too. They are completely out of control. Sheesh.
[Image credit: Hikaru Cho]
The View from a Drawbridge 
So right! Women need to unite against this tyranny, and that’s what it is!
Problem is, in this economy we need our jobs even more than our birth control, and they know it, so they can get away with it. Water sinks to its lowest level. People will do what they can get away with.
You always put into words what I’m thinking. I plan to boycott HL as well!!!!
Hate to do it to the female employees, but something has got to give.
Before this thing hit the fan, I saw a Hobby Lobby in my mom’s hometown and looked inside. I saw just enough religious schlock to alert me that this might not be a place I’d like to have dealings with.
I was right. I have to remind myself that some people who follow the conventional religions that I am so allergic to, do in fact support the right of individuals to control their bodies. What can be more basic than not being a slave to nature?? But it disgusts me to have to re-fight battles that I thought were won decades past.
…So when can we talk about bridges again? I have just found that a couple I like might be not long for this world, replaced by less appealing specimens.
Yeah, people don’t remember the scandal with them a few years ago. They wouldn’t stock stuff for Jewish holidays. The howls of protest apparently made them change their mind. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t stepped foot in there since then.
If you get facebook, please post pictures of those drawbridges that are dying on my Drawbridge Lovers page. That’s heartbreaking.
I am afacebookual and illtwitterate. But the threatened individuals in question are the Sarah Mildred Long one in Portsmouth NH, I believe it is, and the two I-5 ones over the Columbia at Vancouver WA. Vertical lifts, all. They aren’t the only ones either. Koglin, writer of the only new book on the subject in many decades, did a sort of census of US movable spans, and it needs an update and clarification. Google Earth has helped me a lot, but there’s only so much one person can do.
Seems like every time I read of a new one being built, it’s a replacement for one we’ve lost–sometimes a better looking one, to my ideas, or a rare breed I wouldn’t mind being preserved. I would not like to see a return of the expansion of cities etc. we saw 100 or so years back, but a stable even if reduced population of diverse and well-designed and maintained movable bridges would be wonderful.
Back to the subject at hand–I don’t care who it is, since I keep quiet about my spirituality, everyone else can do the same with theirs, and keep it out of my private life.
My thoughts exactly regarding spirituality. And I’ll have to look those two bridges up when I’m a little less overwhelmed.
Very well said!!!
Thank you. 🙂
So, what happens when people of other religions that own companies want to refuse to follow federal laws because it offends their religious beliefs?
They become Sovereign Citizens, devolve into domestic terrorists, and the Republicans defend their gun rights.
HA!
The Hobby Lobby decision is part of the trend to redefine earned benefits as entitlements that can redefined by others. Hobby Lobby doesn’t have to offer health insurance benefits at all, but having decided too, it cnanot restrict those benefits on discrimatory bases, nor should the Supreme Court allow it. More trouble to come, I’m afraid, in this Brave New World where the only persons with rights are corporations, another fiction imposed for corporate benefit.
Exactly so, Jen. It’s scary. But actually, since they have more than 50 employees, under the affordable care act, they now do have to offer the insurance or face fines, so this is just another attack on Obamacare. If they can’t get rid of it any other way, they’ll peck away at it until it’s as close to death as possible. The same with Roe V. Wade. Sick and selfish people out there.