Americans
are facing the prospect of their First Amendment rights to freedom of
religion being overturned by the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court
rules in favor of Hobby Lobby, which has challenged the
Affordable Healthcare Act’s contraception mandate,
Americans could find themselves forced to abide by the religion of
their employer, which is not at all what the Founding Fathers had in
mind.
We already know that corporations have First Amendment free speech
rights thanks to the Citizens United ruling, but do they also have
rights to free exercise of religion? The problem is that if corporations
have that right, its employers lose that right: Employees – that is,
actual people – you know, the folks referred to in the “We the people”
of the
Constitution’s preamble,
will have their First Amendment rights curtailed by their employers,
who, for example, might or might not object to contraception or to some
medical procedure or another, like in vitro fertilization, to say
nothing of abortion.
Hobby Lobby, a christian craft chain,
objects to the so-called “morning after pill”; they assert that their
religious beliefs as a corporation trump those of their employees. On Tuesday the 26th, the Supreme Court
announced it would examine their case.
They are not alone. Religion News Service
reports that,
More than 80 lawsuits have been filed against the mandate
by christian groups and christian-owned businesses — many of them catholic — that object to providing birth control coverage or the
coverage of sterilization procedures and what some believe are
abortion-inducing drugs. Others object to the way the government decided
which entities qualify for religious exemptions.
The religio-wingnuts want to put a stranglehold on America’s
religious freedoms, making religious freedom a monopoly held by wingnuts. The First Amendment was written to protect the religious
beliefs of all Americans (not corporations), but increasingly, wingnuts have argued that only their religious beliefs are
legitimate, just as only their political ideology is legitimate. Though
the majority of Americans reject these views – most catholic women use
birth control, for example, and most Americans want access to
contraceptives – authoritarian, patriarchal religious demagogues – like
Ted Cruz, who tweeted “Illegal mandate tramples religious freedom,
should be struck down” – want to determine what is right for everyone
and the First Amendment (with pretty much every part of the Constitution
save the Second Amendment) be damned.
The old adage once used of the Soviet Union in George Orwell’s Animal
Farm, that everyone is equal except those who are more equal than
others, is becoming more true than ever, and could be enshrined into law
by the Supreme Court if it agrees with Hobby Lobby.
Americans need to worry about what is in store for them. The threat
of the Religious Right comes not only from local, state, and federal
elections. Americans need to be concerned about what the Supreme Court
might do next to make corporations more legally people than genuine
people, and what that will mean for our prospects as citizens of a
nation that enshrines the ideal that political power derives from the
will of the people.
America could become an oxymoron, which, when you think about it, is a rather fitting epitaph for repugican government.
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