Hobby Lobby wins with SCOTUS's help.

[BarkAtTheMoon]

In related news:

http://www.atlbanana.com/supreme-court-upholds-little-caesars-right-to-feed-christian-employees-to-lions/

Supreme Court Upholds Little Caesar’s Right to Feed Christian Employees to Lions
WASHINGTON, DCâ€"The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Roman-owned
pizza chain Little Caesar’s was within its rights to place Christian employees in an arena and then unleash starved, vicious lions and lionesses upon them. The court cited religious freedom as its guiding principle. The 5-to-4 ruling opened the door to potentially thousands of Christian Little Caesar employees nationwide being immediately fed to the top predators of the African savannah.

Little Caesar’s argued that the persecution of Christians and the feeding of them to ravenous big cats was a “deeply held” religious belief, that the continued survival of the roughly 6,000 Christian employees, as well as the fact that they remained on company payroll, imposed a “substantial financial burden” on their religious liberty.

The 5 conservative Justices agreed. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr, the author of the majority opinion, wrote:

while it is debatable that some harm may come to any Christians fed to a lion or lioness, there is certainly demonstrable harm being done to these animals that are denied the tasty, nutrient-rich Christians that their diet requires

A Christian employee of the company, Ed Broyles, expressed dismay at the decision. “They’re gonna fuckin’ feed me to a motherfucking lion? But I only ever go to church on like Easter!”, he said, shaking visibly and sweating. “Jesus H Christ on a cracker, I’ve got a fucking family!”

Little Caesar owner and CEO, Little Caesar himself, applauded the ruling. When asked how soon his company would begin killing off its Christian employees he responded, “Carpe Diem.”

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Good one Bark..

The backlash to this nonsense is coming. You have to know Democrats are going to hang this ruling around the necks of every republican between now and midterm and beyond. If they don't all hope will be lost. We'll become a fascist state lock, stock and barrel.

[ApostateLois]

Need anymore proof that Hobby Lobby is run by misogynists? Here it is:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/30/hobby-lobby-viagra_n_5543916.html

Hobby Lobby CEO thinks women are not entitled to IUDs, but men can still get vasectomies and Viagra under their insurance.

[frosty]

To those delusional enough to think religion is dying off SCOTUS disagrees. I'm convinced that sooner or later this country will institutionalize blasphemy laws to make criminals out of us all. I hope I'm dead before then, but I can see it coming.

This may perhaps be the most blunt, truthful, and foretelling post ever written on this forum website.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

This may perhaps be the most blunt, truthful, and foretelling post ever written on this forum website.

and I hope we're both wrong and feel silly for even suggesting it someday.

[frosty]

and I hope we're both wrong and feel silly for even suggesting it someday.

What you just said is perfectly natural to think. I feel it sometimes, even these days. But the problem with humans is that they are like very strong freight trains; once they get going down the track, and pick up speed and power, it's going to be quite hard to stop them. Unless you use the different mechanisms in place to stop it, in this case that would be a metaphor for critical thinking and logic. Nobody wants to use those mechanisms.

[ApostateLois]

They need to change their acronym to something that doesn't look like SCROTUM.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

They need to change their acronym to something that doesn't look like SCROTUM.

Change it to SCROTUM.. DRIPPYSCROTUM. It is more fitting.

[Mermaid]

I found it surprising because it is such an egregious diss to women and opens a HUGELY bad precedent.

I am not happy. At all.

[SGOS]

NPR spend some time on the issue yesterday.  Partly, the court decided it was OK to refuse to offer birth control as a corporation, because the government will allow women birth control health coverage under a separate option.  How much red tape this entails was not addressed.  Whether this opens a Pandora's box to other aspects of freedom of religion at a corporate level is a concern, but the "unforeseeables" are not yet known.  Clearly, this is seen as a win for Christianity by some people, which seems dangerous because if it is, it most certainly could not interpreted as a win for freedom of religion.  Who would have a clue if this played a part in the decision of the court.  God help us all.   

[BarkAtTheMoon]

The whole case was bullshit to begin with. Something I saw in an article linked on reddit yesterday said that the insurance Hobby Lobby had used for years always covered the contraception options in question. It was only when Obamacare was implemented that they dropped them in 2012. Contraception, religion, abortion, it was all a lie. This was nothing more than yet another right wing political attack against the ACA, and they had no problem shitting on their female employees to do it. The conservative wing of SCOTUS went right along for the ride.

ETA: The link. I don't fault the retirement plan stuff as much as the article does. Mutual plans have all kinds of different companies in them, although it's just an added layer to their hypocracy.

[SGOS]

The whole case was bullshit to begin with. Something I saw in an article linked on reddit yesterday said that the insurance Hobby Lobby had used for years always covered the contraception options in question. It was only when Obamacare was implemented that they dropped them in 2012. Contraception, religion, abortion, it was all a lie. This was nothing more than yet another right wing political attack against the ACA, and they had no problem shitting on their female employees to do it. The conservative wing of SCOTUS went right along for the ride.

ETA: The link. I don't fault the retirement plan stuff as much as the article does. Mutual plans have all kinds of different companies in them, although it's just an added layer to their hypocracy.

I think you're right.  NPR mentioned the politics involved very briefly.  In fact, Hobby Lobby was originally reluctant to take it to court.  They were recruited by some "Organization for the Freedom of Something Other", which sounded more like a political group than a religious one.  Not to say Hobby Lobby isn't pleased.  In fact, they are actively involved in getting out their fundamentalist message.  And of course, the government will pick up part of the insurance costs that cover their employees contraception.  If I remember, NPR called the suit a reaction to an administration policy.

In that regard is more of a political statement, but future ramifications are yet to be known.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

It opens the door for all types of religiosity based fuckery and the court fucked up big time because they didn't and couldn't declare it only for one sect of one religion because our constitution forbids favoring one over the other so that if you're a corporate entity owned by strict extremist Muslims of whatever branch and your browser particular Koran verse says you get to fuck over non Muslims the precidedent is set now or even if you attend the wrong xtian church the corporation can declare you to be a heretic and fire your ass. You're gonna see all kinds of known unknown fuckery out of this bullshit. This court's majority ought to be disbarred for malfeasance at minimum.

Edit:my religious belief forbids editing for auto complete fuckups. I'm suing.

[ApostateLois]

Let's remember that most of the products Hobby Lobby sells are from China, where forced abortions are common as part of their efforts to curb the population. Women are merely objects to be monitored and controlled, their babies nothing more than numbers to be culled when there are too many of them, like animals in a park. Hobby Lobby supports this with every order that they place to restock the shelves, and then have the audacity to claim that they cannot support abortion! It is a good thing that hypocrisy is not a sin, or else most Christians would never stand a chance of going to heaven.

[Mermaid]

The BC methods they blocked are not even abortifacients in the first place. That is basic biology. Preventing pregnancy is not the same as terminating pregnancy. If implantation doesn't happen, it's not pregnancy. But that's beside the point.

Now, employers have the legal power to restrict access to women's healthcare based on their religious beliefs; they have the power to enforce these religious beliefs on other people in a very real way. That is fundamentally very fucked up.

That is not acceptable.