The pepper-mill principle

[rug]

Hobby Lobby and religious exceptions

Jul 7th 2014, 14:50 by M.S.

ROSS DOUTHAT thinks liberals should object less strenuously to the Hobby Lobby decision because religion often impels corporations to do things that liberals would consider morally praiseworthy. He points out that Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft shops, was itself lauded by the left-wing website Demos last year for paying its employees excellent wages and donating to charities, and that this sense of ethical responsibility flows from the Christian convictions of its owners.

Mr Douthat's argument is a mess. Liberals do not object to Hobby Lobby paying its employees higher-than-average wages out of a sense of Christian responsibility; they object to it trying to dictate the sexual and reproductive choices of its employees, whether out of a sense of Christian responsibility or not. They also object to the principle that for-profit corporations can use self-professed religious objections to void government regulations that serve important social ends. There is no reason why people who applaud Hobby Lobby's progressive attitudes towards wages should also have to applaud their Victorian attitudes towards sexuality, or why people who approve of corporate generosity towards employees' social needs should also think that corporations ought to be able to control their employees' social lives.

In short, nobody objects to Hobby Lobby's owners being Christian, and if their religious convictions lead them to give their employees nice things that increase their well-being and autonomy, so much the better. Rather, people object when Hobby Lobby's owners demand exceptions from the law because they fear their employees' behaviour could otherwise implicate them in violations of their religious taboos. There is no reason why liberals who approve of some things people do for religious reasons, like paying their employees extra, should also approve of everything else people do for religious reasons, like making it more difficult for their employees to get full-spectrum contraceptive coverage. Mr Douthat tries to argue that making for-profit corporations with religious owners give their employees the same health insurance everybody else gets will have all sorts of effects that liberals will hate:

“Insist that for legal purposes there’s no such thing as a religiously motivated business, and you will get fewer religiously motivated business owners — and more chain stores that happily cover Plan B but pay significantly lower wages. Pressure religious hospitals to perform abortions or sex-reassignment surgery (or some eugenic breakthrough, down the road), and you’ll eventually get fewer religious hospitals — and probably less charity care and a more zealous focus on the bottom line. Tell religious charities they have legal rights only insofar as they serve their co-religionists, and you’ll see the scope of their endeavors contract.”

This is utterly unconvincing. Hobby Lobby's owners will neither stop selling gimcracks and whizdoodles nor divest their ownership interest if they have to start giving their employees normal health-insurance policies. I have enough confidence in the sincerity of their Christian convictions to believe that they would not stop paying their employees better-than-average wages, either. There are always a few extremists around, but broadly speaking, the number of "religiously motivated business owners" who will stop engaging in business if told that they must give their employees health insurance that covers Plan B will be vanishingly small. If Mr Douthat wants to see some religiously motivated business owners who have continued to engage in business with verve, vigour and flair for decades despite having to comply with laws that implicate them in all sorts of potential employee violations of their religious taboos, I suggest he take a trip to Manhattan and walk down 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/07/hobby-lobby-and-religious-exceptions