A Few Religious Objections to Hobby Lobby, et al.
A Few Religious Objections to Hobby Lobby, et al.
By: Peterr Wednesday March 26, 2014 6:45 am
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I have strong — very strong — religious objections to the unequal treatment of people before the law, yet the Department of Justice seems bent on spending my tax dollars and the tax dollars of similarly-minded folks by the millions to chase the poor and powerless into prison while giving the wealthy and powerful sternly worded letters and a good talking-to. In the financial fraud around the housing market, homeowners are hounded and unscrupulous mortgage dealers are allowed to roam free. During the recent Lesser Depression, homeowners pushed underwater by the practices of their banks have suffered greatly (“We’re sorry, but your equity has disappeared because the property values have fallen so much because we crashed the economy”), yet the SEC and DOJ use my tax dollars to go to great extremes to settle civil litigation with the the banks in such a toothless fashion that the board of JPMorgan Chase gave Jamie Dimon a 74% raise after guiding them through with only a slap on the corporate wrist. And you don’t want to know how strongly I object on religious grounds to the failure of the DOJ to pursue criminal rather than civil penalties . . .
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I have passionately strong religious objections to using my tax dollars to subsidize the energy extraction industry that poisons the air we breathe, fouls the water we drink, and destabilizes the ground on which we build our communities, all while their efforts heat and heat and heat our planet.
And I have extremely, seriously, powerfully, incredibly, viscerally, wildly, passionately strong religious objections to using my tax dollars to set up and sustain a system that carves out religious exemptions for the strongly held personal beliefs of some and not the strongly held personal beliefs of others, in such a way that the beliefs of some impose themselves on the beliefs of others.
Judging from the questioning at the Supreme Court yesterday, the conservative SCOTUS justices have no such concerns. That’s understandable, I suppose. They have a highly insulated position which compensates them well enough that they can live in comfort. They do not live in fear that they might be laid off, that a subordinate might shove them aside and take their job, or that their company might be downsized, moved, or sold. They do not worry about being forced to retire when they would like to continue working. A SCOTUS justice lives in a world where the only people whose beliefs truly matter are the other eight justices with whom he or she shares the bench. They live in a world in which they make the rules — for themselves, their workplace, and for the nation. To go by their comments yesterday from the bench, some of them do not appear to remember what life is like for the rest of us.
Once upon a time, slavery was defended by some on religious grounds. Is SCOTUS ready to sanction the return to slavery, because some have religious beliefs that call for it?
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many more objections in this great rant:
http://my.firedoglake.com/peterr/2014/03/26/a-few-religious-objections-to-hobby-lobby-et-al/
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