Hobby Lobby and Religious Liberty win

Hobby Lobby and religious liberty have won. Corporations which are 'closely held' do not have to pay for benefits which go against their sincerely held religious beliefs. It is a good and just verdict handed down by the US Supreme Court, radicals like Ruth Bader Ginsburg notwithstanding.

To begin with, as no company is morally obliged to offer workers any specific benefits at all, it is hardly right for the government to hold that any group of workers ought to receive any special benefits. Period. This may not be a point of law but it is a basic and straightforward moral point. No one, corporation or individual, ought to be compelled to do what is not an obligation in the first place.

Secondly, yesterday's ruling affirms that corporations are people. They most certainly are moral people; if they weren't, it would be difficult to apply any laws against them. Further, they represent what individuals within a company want: they are an expression of persons and so have rights and responsibilities with regard to those persons. An excellent defense of this principle by Professor Steven Horwitz of St. Lawrence University can be found here: http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/07/yes-corporations-are-people/ Corporation are people who have the right to express themselves as such. Period.

To be sure, it was a close decision. We need to remember that as we consider the upcoming 2016 Presidential election, as there will almost certainly be Supreme Court positions to be filled by whoever wins and we need to make sure that it's a good Republican in the White House to fill them. But for now, let's simply be happy that religious liberty has won. Let's be happy that, at least sometimes, the system does work.

Hobby Lobby and Religious Freedom

Hobby Lobby, a national chain of arts and crafts stores, has vowed not to cover health insurance for its employees so long as it must include coverage for the 'morning after' pill which induces abortions. The Obama Administration has said that the company will face fines of $1.3 million dollars per day so long as it does not fulfill all obligations of Obamacare. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, refused an injunction for Hobby Lobby or its sister chain, Mardel Inc, until legal actions on the question are settled.

So there you have it. The first salvo in the war for religious freedom, one of the freedoms which the Constitution is supposed to guarantee, the Constitution which the current President takes very lightly if he considers it at all, has been fired. It will be a long and costly war in terms of human cost.

The Catholic Church has already issued stern warnings that the battles may well include open defiance of the Obama Administration and the federal government, up to and including civil disobedience. We may have to go to jail in standing up for our beliefs.

The lesson here is that the left does not respect the rights of anyone not in its camp. You have the moral right to the morning after pill, so much so that someone else must pay for it if, as the direct result of your own indifference over your own actions, you find yourself in a position which you don't like. This is the worst kind of hubris: that someone else must cover your irresponsibility.

To you Catholics who voted for the man behind this atrocity against human rights: are you happy now? Or is your conscience clear on the point that its perfectly all right to force views on others when they are at odds with your President? Have you forgotten that you're not a Democrat first, nor a Republican first; not even an American first? You're a Catholic first, and must act accordingly. Will you now go to jail for your faith, seeing as you support a leader who spits at your faith?

Be that as it may, we see very clearly this morning that of the five freedoms, religious freedom means the least. Our nation, founded upon that principle almost more than any of the other freedoms, turns its back on its primary founding ideal. Woe to you, especially those of you who should have known better, that put the United States on the road to the tyranny of the majority. The blood of future Americans is on your hands.