This
has taken me a few days to write, in part because I'm trying to marshal
my thoughts on a topic that makes me want to vomit every time I think
of it. In all honesty, this goes far beyond simply how it affects Pagans,in into how it affects every single minority faith in the country. I don't like getting involved with politics. I really don't, and the mix of religion with politics is especially distasteful.
But I look on the recent ruling of the Supreme Court - the one that
allows Hobby Lobby, Eden Foods, and in fact any corporation, partnership
or sole proprietorship the "right" to deny its female employees birth
control based on the CEO's religious beliefs - in absolute horror. As a
Witch, a woman, and a business owner, I cannot give full voice to just
how wrong this is. As a veteran, forever bound by my oath of
service, I somehow must find the voice. And for this I must focus on
only one item out of the clamor.
So I'm going to shut up for a moment about the fact that the so-called "rights" of corporations have been elevated above the needs of 51% of the American population. I'll ignore the fact that it's inherently and blatantly discriminatory. I'm going to leave aside the argument that Hobby Lobby's corporate investments include manufacturers of the very contraceptives they specifically take issue with. I'll turn a blind eye to the junk science, as well, that calls the morning-after pill an "abortifacient" (it's not, but it gets the Republican base riled up to call it that).
I'm going to leave aside the fact that they still cover Viagra. I'm going not touch the fact that it denies female Hobby Lobby employees the right to control what's in their bodies, and that if they do want it in defiance of their employer they will have to pay twice for it.
I'm going to try not to comment too loudly on the fact that birth control is not always prescribed for contraceptive purposes - it can treat other medical conditions, and for some women even the risk of getting pregnant is life-threatening. I won't comment on the fact that few CEOs are medical doctors, and not being such they have no right to determine what medical care their employees should or should not receive.
I'm going to not say anything about the fact that a contraceptive prescription not an indicator that a woman is planning to have sex, nor is it basis for a judgment of her lifestyle or personal habits. I'm going to pointedly look away from the fact that every last one of the justices involved with the majority opinion was male, three of them deeply conservative, and at least one of them (Thomas) known to be openly corrupt and an embarrassment to the integrity of the Court. And I'm going to bite my tongue on a comment that the sex lives and reproductive health of a company's employees are not, and should not be, of any interest whatsoever to any CEO, and that no matter how strongly a person holds their personal beliefs, it is not grounds to use the law to force others to comply with your beliefs on morality.
What I will speak on is the depth of the violation of the Constitution here.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke so well on it, and yet she did not go far enough. Speaking for Justices Kagan, Breyer and Sotomayor in 35 blistering pages of dissent, she hit the central nail on the head in the very first sentence of her essay. (Dissent starts on page 60.)
"In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs." (Burwell vrs. Hobby Lobby, pg 60. Emphasis mine)
It took less than a day for issues raised in Justice Ginsburg's scathing, 35-page dissent to be proven out, as for-profit entities around the country (notably Eden Foods, one of the country's top producers of organic foods) scrambled to get their special dispensations based on "personal" religious belief. Think of that - less than a day for the Supreme Court to actively tell lower courts that its decision didn't just apply to contraceptives, and that the lower courts should either reconsider their existing rejections of corporate exclusion from Federal law, or uphold their existing passes on such exclusion. So how far will this be allowed to go? And it is disturbing that the Court, which gave legal credence to the idea of corporations as people, now chooses to double down on the idea by endorsing the concept that said "corporate citizens" are endowed with the same rights to free speech and freedom of religion that living, breathing people have. (We know that they're not really the same, because corporate "speech" is in the form of money - which they have far greater access to than does the individual citizen of a society falling into economic stagnation and decay.)
But the deepest and ugliest truth of it all has yet to be voiced until now.
How does secular law fare now, when placed against the "sincerely-held belief" that another person should die?
You see, the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Hobby Lobby has called into question the validity of secular law when it comes into conflict with religious law. And worse, it has placed religious law in the position of primacy over secular law. The Affordable Care Act mandates coverage for contraception, excepting only non-profits engaged in religious ministry (and providing alternatives for that). This is essential for women's health, as well as for effective family planning, and the benefits to the corporations providing it include fewer days lost to appointments, routine care, issues and potential complications surrounding maternity. This becomes a public health benefit on the order and magnitude of clean drinking water and fresh air. Aside from that, it's Federal freaking law.
But the Supreme Court's decision in Burwell vrs. Hobby Lobby just opened the door to special dispensations from Federal Law, based on the claim of personal religious adherence that should never have been misapplied to business law. It is eerily reminiscent of the corruption experienced by the medieval Catholic Church with the issuance of "indulgences." Apparently history has been forgotten (again).
There is no way to prove in court the depth of the sincerity of someone's religious beliefs, so any claim of belief must necessarily and logically be treated as just that: a claim. The greatest danger in this ruling is not the forcing of beliefs on employees, but the fact that religious belief, or the claim thereof, is now all that is required to ignore any law.
So a Jehovah's Witness can now deny blood transfusions to any employee, based on their own religious beliefs. A CEO who is a Scientologist can now legally endanger the mental health of an employee who is in need of antidepressant medication by denying coverage based on his own personal beliefs, and get away with doing so. A Muslim, Jewish or Hindu employer can now deny any medication that comes in a gelatin capsule (gelatin is sourced from cattle or pigs' feet) - or force an employee to pay out-of-pocket for surgery requiring anesthesia (sourced from pigs). Hotels have been searching for years for legal justification to deny lodging to same-sex couples: now it's been handed to them. Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, a megachurch serving the region where I grew up in Southern California, is already on board seeking religious exemption from anti-discrimination laws, specifically from the law that currently prevents him from discriminating against gays in his hiring practices (how very Christian of him). Do we see the horror being unleashed here?Conservatives have been all worked up about the Affordable Care Act allegedly bringing government into your personal health care decisions - but they're perfectly all right with letting your boss in on the discussion, it seems.
And the worst? Murder, manslaughter, attempts of - we hold these crimes as among the worst wrongs that can be committed against an individual by another individual. Until now. Secular law now has a question mark hanging over it when in conflict with religious law. What happens when the two conflict? What if the employing CEO holds a religious belief that actively advocates for murder of a specific sect - or even just of anyone not like themselves, or even just permits you to let them die and do nothing to save them?
Let me give an example. The Biblical line from Exodus, "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live" is a real and very open existential threat to Pagans worldwide, especially to those who openly identify as Wiccan or Witches (like myself). Given that I unambiguously call myself a Witch, the most charitable interpretation of that becomes that I could suddenly choke on my food, and nobody who knows I'm a Witch is under any legal, moral or ethical obligation to perform the Heimlich and save my life: they can sit back and watch me die and be perfectly excused. In the strictest interpretation, they'll go to heaven for my murder.
Just for illustration, this is no idle threat: this is something the Pagan community deals with on a day-to-day basis. To this day, people are murdered around the world - tortured, mutilated, burned alive - just on the accusation of "sorcery" or "witchcraft." Most of these are women, many are children: it is a global problem being tracked by Amnesty International and it is very serious in scope. And witch-hunts happen here in America today, as well.
Say I got hit by a delivery driver, one who works for a company owned by one of these "religious" folks (which is therefore a company that I try to have as little to do with as possible anyway). Maybe he's even driving the company vehicle. Me being me, "Wiccan" is going to wind up on my medical paperwork whether I am conscious to put it there or not. But the CEO is a so-called Christian. Could the company choose to deny me life-saving medical treatment, or recompense for said treatment, because the CEO's religious belief is that I should not be allowed to live? Simply because I believe differently?
It sounds preposterous. Yet the precedent has now been set that Federal law can be ignored in favor of a corporation's "personal" religious preference. How far will this be allowed to go? There are lines in the Bible that call it perfectly OK to rape a woman (as long as you marry her afterwards), or to have more than one wife (though in fifteen years of study, I have yet to find an example permitting more than one husband). How about stoning adulterers or homosexuals? Burning anyone you want to accuse of sorcery - there we go, that's always a classic. How about keeping slaves? Selling your daughters into slavery? This would also constitute "religious belief" as defined by the Old Testament of the Bible. Now we're letting the preachers decide what is legal and what isn't, not the law, and not just for their own congregations but for people who don't even subscribe to that faith. Maybe it's not too great a stretch, then, to see that this becomes an ugly hairball, very quickly.
It goes far, far beyond Christian versus Pagan. The same argument could be had over the lines in the Bible and the Qu'ran which each deal with non-believers. Since 9/11 America has been in the grip of intense, and intensifying, wave of Islamophobia. Right-wing pundits are trumpeting their fears of Sharia Law being established in America - ironically, what they've done is open the way for an equivalent Christian theological establishment ("Wahhabi Lobby," anyone?) THAT sets up a religious war, IN AMERICA. And i don't want to consider the reverberations through America's ties to Israel.Justice Ginsburg wrote into her dissent a chilling warning. She said:
"Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be 'perceived as favoring one religion over another,' the very 'risk the [Constitution's] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude."
All respect to the Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but "startling breadth" does not begin to cover it. The Supreme Court's majority ruling in Burwell vrs. Hobby Lobby is an unmitigated catastrophe that goes far beyond the relatively limited issue of gender-based discrimination in contraception access. In delivering such a damaging strike to the wall of separation between Church and State, they leave the Founding Fathers reeling in their graves. At best, the violation of the Constitution inherent in the selective validation of certain religious faiths over others leaves a tremendous loophole wide open for the abuse of the labor force at the behest of "religious" CEOs. Going a step further, the three-way revolving-door joining the business world, the lobbyist world and the legislatures at both state and Federal levels creates the possibility of a Christian funadmentalist theology gaining real power. At worst, we have collectively taken another step towards the setup for a another bloody civil war, fueled in part by religious discord, to occur right here on American soil.
There is NO good that can come out of this ruling. None.
So I'm going to shut up for a moment about the fact that the so-called "rights" of corporations have been elevated above the needs of 51% of the American population. I'll ignore the fact that it's inherently and blatantly discriminatory. I'm going to leave aside the argument that Hobby Lobby's corporate investments include manufacturers of the very contraceptives they specifically take issue with. I'll turn a blind eye to the junk science, as well, that calls the morning-after pill an "abortifacient" (it's not, but it gets the Republican base riled up to call it that).
I'm going to leave aside the fact that they still cover Viagra. I'm going not touch the fact that it denies female Hobby Lobby employees the right to control what's in their bodies, and that if they do want it in defiance of their employer they will have to pay twice for it.
I'm going to try not to comment too loudly on the fact that birth control is not always prescribed for contraceptive purposes - it can treat other medical conditions, and for some women even the risk of getting pregnant is life-threatening. I won't comment on the fact that few CEOs are medical doctors, and not being such they have no right to determine what medical care their employees should or should not receive.
I'm going to not say anything about the fact that a contraceptive prescription not an indicator that a woman is planning to have sex, nor is it basis for a judgment of her lifestyle or personal habits. I'm going to pointedly look away from the fact that every last one of the justices involved with the majority opinion was male, three of them deeply conservative, and at least one of them (Thomas) known to be openly corrupt and an embarrassment to the integrity of the Court. And I'm going to bite my tongue on a comment that the sex lives and reproductive health of a company's employees are not, and should not be, of any interest whatsoever to any CEO, and that no matter how strongly a person holds their personal beliefs, it is not grounds to use the law to force others to comply with your beliefs on morality.
What I will speak on is the depth of the violation of the Constitution here.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke so well on it, and yet she did not go far enough. Speaking for Justices Kagan, Breyer and Sotomayor in 35 blistering pages of dissent, she hit the central nail on the head in the very first sentence of her essay. (Dissent starts on page 60.)
"In a decision of startling breadth, the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs." (Burwell vrs. Hobby Lobby, pg 60. Emphasis mine)
It took less than a day for issues raised in Justice Ginsburg's scathing, 35-page dissent to be proven out, as for-profit entities around the country (notably Eden Foods, one of the country's top producers of organic foods) scrambled to get their special dispensations based on "personal" religious belief. Think of that - less than a day for the Supreme Court to actively tell lower courts that its decision didn't just apply to contraceptives, and that the lower courts should either reconsider their existing rejections of corporate exclusion from Federal law, or uphold their existing passes on such exclusion. So how far will this be allowed to go? And it is disturbing that the Court, which gave legal credence to the idea of corporations as people, now chooses to double down on the idea by endorsing the concept that said "corporate citizens" are endowed with the same rights to free speech and freedom of religion that living, breathing people have. (We know that they're not really the same, because corporate "speech" is in the form of money - which they have far greater access to than does the individual citizen of a society falling into economic stagnation and decay.)
But the deepest and ugliest truth of it all has yet to be voiced until now.
How does secular law fare now, when placed against the "sincerely-held belief" that another person should die?
You see, the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Hobby Lobby has called into question the validity of secular law when it comes into conflict with religious law. And worse, it has placed religious law in the position of primacy over secular law. The Affordable Care Act mandates coverage for contraception, excepting only non-profits engaged in religious ministry (and providing alternatives for that). This is essential for women's health, as well as for effective family planning, and the benefits to the corporations providing it include fewer days lost to appointments, routine care, issues and potential complications surrounding maternity. This becomes a public health benefit on the order and magnitude of clean drinking water and fresh air. Aside from that, it's Federal freaking law.
But the Supreme Court's decision in Burwell vrs. Hobby Lobby just opened the door to special dispensations from Federal Law, based on the claim of personal religious adherence that should never have been misapplied to business law. It is eerily reminiscent of the corruption experienced by the medieval Catholic Church with the issuance of "indulgences." Apparently history has been forgotten (again).
There is no way to prove in court the depth of the sincerity of someone's religious beliefs, so any claim of belief must necessarily and logically be treated as just that: a claim. The greatest danger in this ruling is not the forcing of beliefs on employees, but the fact that religious belief, or the claim thereof, is now all that is required to ignore any law.
So a Jehovah's Witness can now deny blood transfusions to any employee, based on their own religious beliefs. A CEO who is a Scientologist can now legally endanger the mental health of an employee who is in need of antidepressant medication by denying coverage based on his own personal beliefs, and get away with doing so. A Muslim, Jewish or Hindu employer can now deny any medication that comes in a gelatin capsule (gelatin is sourced from cattle or pigs' feet) - or force an employee to pay out-of-pocket for surgery requiring anesthesia (sourced from pigs). Hotels have been searching for years for legal justification to deny lodging to same-sex couples: now it's been handed to them. Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, a megachurch serving the region where I grew up in Southern California, is already on board seeking religious exemption from anti-discrimination laws, specifically from the law that currently prevents him from discriminating against gays in his hiring practices (how very Christian of him). Do we see the horror being unleashed here?Conservatives have been all worked up about the Affordable Care Act allegedly bringing government into your personal health care decisions - but they're perfectly all right with letting your boss in on the discussion, it seems.
And the worst? Murder, manslaughter, attempts of - we hold these crimes as among the worst wrongs that can be committed against an individual by another individual. Until now. Secular law now has a question mark hanging over it when in conflict with religious law. What happens when the two conflict? What if the employing CEO holds a religious belief that actively advocates for murder of a specific sect - or even just of anyone not like themselves, or even just permits you to let them die and do nothing to save them?
Let me give an example. The Biblical line from Exodus, "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live" is a real and very open existential threat to Pagans worldwide, especially to those who openly identify as Wiccan or Witches (like myself). Given that I unambiguously call myself a Witch, the most charitable interpretation of that becomes that I could suddenly choke on my food, and nobody who knows I'm a Witch is under any legal, moral or ethical obligation to perform the Heimlich and save my life: they can sit back and watch me die and be perfectly excused. In the strictest interpretation, they'll go to heaven for my murder.
Just for illustration, this is no idle threat: this is something the Pagan community deals with on a day-to-day basis. To this day, people are murdered around the world - tortured, mutilated, burned alive - just on the accusation of "sorcery" or "witchcraft." Most of these are women, many are children: it is a global problem being tracked by Amnesty International and it is very serious in scope. And witch-hunts happen here in America today, as well.
Say I got hit by a delivery driver, one who works for a company owned by one of these "religious" folks (which is therefore a company that I try to have as little to do with as possible anyway). Maybe he's even driving the company vehicle. Me being me, "Wiccan" is going to wind up on my medical paperwork whether I am conscious to put it there or not. But the CEO is a so-called Christian. Could the company choose to deny me life-saving medical treatment, or recompense for said treatment, because the CEO's religious belief is that I should not be allowed to live? Simply because I believe differently?
It sounds preposterous. Yet the precedent has now been set that Federal law can be ignored in favor of a corporation's "personal" religious preference. How far will this be allowed to go? There are lines in the Bible that call it perfectly OK to rape a woman (as long as you marry her afterwards), or to have more than one wife (though in fifteen years of study, I have yet to find an example permitting more than one husband). How about stoning adulterers or homosexuals? Burning anyone you want to accuse of sorcery - there we go, that's always a classic. How about keeping slaves? Selling your daughters into slavery? This would also constitute "religious belief" as defined by the Old Testament of the Bible. Now we're letting the preachers decide what is legal and what isn't, not the law, and not just for their own congregations but for people who don't even subscribe to that faith. Maybe it's not too great a stretch, then, to see that this becomes an ugly hairball, very quickly.
It goes far, far beyond Christian versus Pagan. The same argument could be had over the lines in the Bible and the Qu'ran which each deal with non-believers. Since 9/11 America has been in the grip of intense, and intensifying, wave of Islamophobia. Right-wing pundits are trumpeting their fears of Sharia Law being established in America - ironically, what they've done is open the way for an equivalent Christian theological establishment ("Wahhabi Lobby," anyone?) THAT sets up a religious war, IN AMERICA. And i don't want to consider the reverberations through America's ties to Israel.Justice Ginsburg wrote into her dissent a chilling warning. She said:
"Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be 'perceived as favoring one religion over another,' the very 'risk the [Constitution's] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude."
All respect to the Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but "startling breadth" does not begin to cover it. The Supreme Court's majority ruling in Burwell vrs. Hobby Lobby is an unmitigated catastrophe that goes far beyond the relatively limited issue of gender-based discrimination in contraception access. In delivering such a damaging strike to the wall of separation between Church and State, they leave the Founding Fathers reeling in their graves. At best, the violation of the Constitution inherent in the selective validation of certain religious faiths over others leaves a tremendous loophole wide open for the abuse of the labor force at the behest of "religious" CEOs. Going a step further, the three-way revolving-door joining the business world, the lobbyist world and the legislatures at both state and Federal levels creates the possibility of a Christian funadmentalist theology gaining real power. At worst, we have collectively taken another step towards the setup for a another bloody civil war, fueled in part by religious discord, to occur right here on American soil.
There is NO good that can come out of this ruling. None.
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