: Reading Burwell v Hobby Lobby. Trying to read it again and again and again in its full breath and context since 30 June. Though I too am concerned of this rulings immediate blow on womens rights, I am beginning to see the US Federal Government as the biggest victim of this ruling. Instead of upholding the religious freedom for all, this ruling upheld the religious freedom only of the haves and the powerful. But that too is not the major issue of this ruling. Burwell v Hobby Lobby significantly reduces the US Federal Governments role as the enforcer and protector of the freedom of religion and the separation of church and state guaranteed in the Constitution and puts the enforcer on trial and interpretational with a full possibility of its position being challenged and discredited depending on how religion is being interpreted at the Supreme Court. Consider these two questions, and you will see why this ruling does NOT uphold the freedom of religion: 1. Is the US Supreme Court the final authority to determine which belief is to be considered as religion or not? 2. Does the freedom of religion include the freedom not to believe in or accept a set of religious creeds or doctrines that one does not agree with? If you answered yes to 1, then you just agreed to the prospect of the Moloch worship of human sacrifice to be allowed as long as the Supreme Court has a stomach to interpret it as religion. A bit extreme? How about Lemon Test? Since 1981, there are a number of precedents where Lemon Test was sidestepped in ruling. And besides, ask your priest or pastor who has the authority to determine his religion as religion. His god/gods or the US Supreme Court? I think you know the answer to this already even without asking. If you answered no to 2, then you just agreed to the prospect of a possibility that someday if one particular religious entity comes to yield an influential and predominant economic, political and cultural sway in the United States of America, as long as it maintains a closely held structure of all its companies, organisations and branches, it could exercise the rights to write and revise its own religious laws in addition to or in place of the Federal laws and dictate what you should or should not believe. Not possible? Then think about these two realities of our world right now: 1. all churches in the United States are registered as corporations with IRS, and 2. the head of the Roman Catholic Church is also the head of Vatican City, an internationally-recognised city state that has its embassies and ambassadors all over the world, so is going to the Sunday Mass at a local Catholic church in your town a religious act or state act? (I am not attacking the Catholics here, I am merely pointing out the blurring line between church and state using the Catholic Church as an example.) Yet my reading is not complete. This is what comes to my mind so far. I just wanted to point out that this ruling is way bigger than the womens rights, pro-choice/pro-life, and Obamacare issues. I need to continue to read this.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 22:31:34 +0000