Back in 2000, journalist William Greider wrote something that immediately resonated with me as being an accurate statement about the way society’s views change on major issues. He said:
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Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Back in 2000, journalist William Greider wrote something that immediately resonated with me as being an accurate statement about the way society’s views change on major issues. He said:
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Bob Jones University is an extremely fundamentalist Christian institution that not only denounces homosexuality but also even prohibited inter-racial dating and marriage. When that policy was challenged by the IRS that denied its tax-exempt status because of its discriminatory policies, the university took its case against the IRS all the way to the US Supreme Court, where they lost.
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So here I am in Auckland awaiting the start of the first semi-final game between New Zealand and South Africa due to start in four hours time. I will be watching it on TV instead of going to the nearby Eden Park grounds. If Sri Lanka had beaten South Africa and made it to this game I would have tried to get tickets even though it would have been very hard. The four semi-finalists (New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and India) are not surprises and all the games should be close ones.
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I have written many times before about how the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has become a menace and is being used by religious people to gain exemptions from following all manner of laws, the Hobby Lobby contraception case being one of the more egregious examples.
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The Hobby Lobby case, where the US Supreme court ruled that under some vaguely defined circumstances, owners of companies had right to impose their religious views as company policies as if the companies were individuals under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), was widely predicted to open up a Pandora’s box with others seeking similar exemptions from following the law because of their ‘sincerely held religious beliefs’.
And lo, what the prophets foretold has come to pass.
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Last weekend’s conference in Pittsburgh of the PA atheists and humanists was a lot of fun. I have mentioned before that I am somewhat asocial but whenever I do get out to events like this, I have a good time. I met several readers of this blog who introduced themselves to me and I enjoyed talking with them during the breaks and over meals. I knew they were regular readers of my blog because as my talk slides were being readied for projection on the screen, my computer wallpaper that consists of a picture of my dog appeared briefly and they could identify him as Baxter the Wonder Dog!
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While the majority opinion in the Hobby Lobby case argued that it was a limited decision affecting a narrow class of companies, it seems to be part of a general strategy of the US Supreme Court to slowly but steadily encroach on the rights or women and workers for the benefit of corporations.
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It looks like Hobby Lobby has won its case. In a 5-4 decision along the usual lines (Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and Kennedy, all of whom are Catholics by the way), the court said that ‘closely held corporations’ (a specific type of for-profit corporation) each owned and controlled by members of a single family cannot be forced to provide contraception coverage for its employees and should be given the same accommodations as the government gave nonprofit organizations.
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The oral arguments from the Hobby Lobby contraceptive case that was heard before the US Supreme Court on Tuesday can be heard online here, where the concurrent scrolling of the transcript along with the spoken word and identification of the speaker makes things much clearer.
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Today the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case in which two private non-profit companies Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties are claiming that the health insurance plans they provide to their employees should not have to provide contraceptive coverage if doing so violates the religious beliefs of the companies’ owners.
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