Im going to try and take a stab at being very clear. (The standard law answer is, it depends.) This are my personal beliefs, so take what you like and leave the rest, and I do respect your right to disagree or have civil debate, for they are only my current beliefs which do change from time to time, usually based on sad experience. :-) The US Supreme Court usually only answers narrow points of Constitutional or Federal law. Especially if there has been a point of law so badly interpreted by lower courts or a Constitutional law question. Truth is, in law, there are always two sides of an argument. Always one for, and one against. There is an abundance of precedent, (other decided cases) with the theory that if one has similar case faces, similar decisions will be reached. The Hobby Lobby case was a narrow question on a Federal Statute signed into law protecting religious freedom by President Clinton. This was a bi-partisan law and sweeping support in both the House and Senate. HHS is an administrative agency tasked with writing rules to administer laws passed by the legislature. In the Hobby Lobby case, HHS actually wrote laws that disagreed with the very statutes written to protect. The legal question before the court was simply does the HHS have the right to mandate to a religious person to do something that is so against their beliefs, they could not do it. Hobby Lobby is a privately held company. They have religious brochures in their company, purchased apparently great health care plans for all their employees, paid minimum wage employees DOUBLE the minimum wage because the company felt that was the right thing to do, and supplied 16 kinds of birth control in their health care plan. 4 types were not paid for because the owners felt giving pills that created a fertilized egg to be aborted was akin to murder in their belief system. HHS ignored the 1993 statute and then tried to make it a law anyway. Then threatened Hobby Lobby 1.3 Million dollars per day for each day they did not supply those four pills. THAT would drive Hobby Lobby right out of business. HHS was tasked with least intrusive method to implement mandates, and made exceptions based on religious beliefs. But not to Hobby Lobby. So the case went before the Supreme Court which ruled what HHS did was NOT Constitutional and didnt obey Federal Law. So all of my fellow Democrats, keep this question in mind: Are you willing to mandate to others that dont believe the way you do? Is it okay to take away another persons freedom to their beliefs for something you want? I think there is room for all of us, and once it is a discussion instead of a yelling or pointing fingers match, then quite possibly we open the door for miracles for all of us. What say you?
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 04:05:16 +0000
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