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.

Religious Liberty Under Attack

A teacher, fired from a Catholic school in Cincinnati, has been awarded $171,000 for wrongful termination. She was fired for having a child out of wedlock via artificial insemination, which is a violation of Church doctrine. An actively lesbian teacher has been fired from a Columbus school because her lifestyle violates Catholic teaching as well. There's no word on any potential lawsuit, but there has been significant public outcry.

Why ought there be shock and anger at such things? Anyone who knows anything about Catholicism surely knows they violate Catholic doctrine. It's hard to believe that the principles involved themselves did not realize it when they hired into their respective schools. Yet the one sues anyway, and the other is 'heartened' by the support she has received.

But more than that. The cases represent exactly what's wrong with America today regarding religious rights. The lawsuit is particularly galling: while religious groups cannot prevent free speech as demonstrated through the petition supporting the Columbus physical education teacher, the legal action has resulted in a clear violation of the First Amendment. Religious institutions certainly have the moral right to inculcate their doctrine within their own institutions, especially educational ones. On a practical level, there is simply no point in having a religious institution if not to promulgate that religion.

This must mean that authorities and employees within the religious institutions must reflect the beliefs of that religion. When they do not, they forfeit their right to work within that institution.

Rights of conscience are not merely individual. They are also institutional. The Supreme Court has recognized this with regard to political contributions and political speech. The nation needs to recognize as much with regard to religious liberty.

It does not matter what the secular world may think about the given religion. What matters, if the secular world is really intent on being true to its own espoused values about rights, is that religious rights be respected even should it disagree with the particulars involved.

That won't happen. Why? Because the secular religion rising within these United States is as unilateral, arbitrary, and authoritarian as it has often accused any Church in the world to have been. The difference is that secularists are led by nothing but raw power. That power will eventually be the death of all human rights.

Sacrifice religious rights if you must. Just remember that the powers that be will soon enough come for your pound of flesh as well.

Whither Libertarians?

Where are they? Where are all those libertarians who demand greater and greater individual rights for, it seems, everyone under the Sun with a gripe against society (even those clamoring for 'rights' which weren't held to exist not too long ago)? It appears that libertarians are all for personal rights. Until that person is a Catholic, anyway.

We have heard nothing from the liberaltarians about freedom of conscience or religious liberty even in light of the blatant attack on the Church and Catholics by the Obama Administration. But let someone who wants to marry someone of the same sex lament their lack of freedom, and the libertarian liberals are coming out of the woodwork in their defense. Let a Republican leader call for us to be on guard against terrorism, say, and all we'll hear about are the rights of the accused and about how the GOP and the conservatives hold the world and dissenting Americans in contempt.

It is instances such as these which lead conservatives to question libertarian ideals. They lack a consistency which belies, quite frankly, their lack of a sense of justice. They're for freedom: for their friends, and the ideologies they like.

That stinks. Yet we're the hypocrites on freedom and individual rights. Go figure.