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posted by janrinok on Wednesday March 26 2014, @10:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the companies==people-er-does-not-compute dept.

gishzida writes:

"According to a Reuters report Supreme Court signals support for corporate religious claims, "The U.S. Supreme Court appeared poised on Tuesday to open the door to companies' religious-based objections to government regulations as justices weighed whether business owners can object to part of President Barack Obama's healthcare law. From the article:

During a 90-minute oral argument, 30 minutes more than usual, a majority of the nine justices appeared ready to rule that certain for-profit entities have the same religious rights to object as individuals do. A ruling along those lines would likely only apply to closely held companies. As in most close cases of late, Justice Anthony Kennedy will likely be the deciding vote. Based on his questions, it was unclear whether the court would ultimately rule that the companies had a right to an exemption from the contraception provision of President Barack Obama's 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

The dozens of companies involved in the litigation do not all oppose every type of birth control. Some object only to emergency contraceptive methods, such as the so-called morning-after pill, which they view as akin to abortion.

The case marks the second time Obamacare has featured prominently before the Supreme Court. In 2012, the court upheld by a 5-4 vote the constitutionality of the act's core feature requiring people to get health insurance. Although the case has no bearing on the overall healthcare law, it features its own volatile mix of religious rights and reproductive rights. A capacity crowd filled the marble courtroom, while outside hundreds of demonstrators, most of them women, protested loudly in an early spring snowstorm.

We already know that the SCOTUS thinks corporations are citizens, do you think the SCOTUS should allow corporations to have religious beliefs too?"

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by wjwlsn on Thursday March 27 2014, @12:39AM

    by wjwlsn (171) on Thursday March 27 2014, @12:39AM (#21841) Homepage Journal

    I read a lot of old scifi when I was a kid, including most (if not all) of Heinlein's "Future History" stories. One of these stories, "If This Goes On --", really stuck with me... not because it was the greatest story or had the beat writing, but because the country it portrayed (nominally the USA) really scared me. This quote from Wikipedia gives you a sense of the story's backdrop.

    The story is set in a future theocratic American society, ruled by the latest in a series of fundamentalist Christian “Prophets.†The First Prophet was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher turned President (elected in 2012), then dictator (no elections were held in 2016 or later).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_This_Goes_On%E2%80 %94 [wikipedia.org]

    With each passing year, I wonder more and more if something like that "future history" could actually come to pass.

    --
    I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 27 2014, @11:08AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 27 2014, @11:08AM (#21984) Journal

    Why are you at all concerned? There's nothing in the story that is advancing us towards a theocracy in the US. I see this more as a backwater struggle between a few diehard religious groups and some rent-seekers who happen to sell pricy birth control systems.

    • (Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:06PM

      by wjwlsn (171) on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:06PM (#22079) Homepage Journal

      I'm not really considering this one news item in isolation. In my opinion, it's just another sign that the power of organized religion is growing in the US. For instance, I occasionally watch "Survivor" -- mostly because my wife watches it -- and I remember feeling somewhat shocked a few years ago when some teams started holding prayer circles and some players started expressing very strong religious beliefs. Then there are shows like "The Voice", where many contestants discuss their various faiths and how they thank God / Jesus for everything that's gone right in their lives. Now add in the news stories about religion-based charter schools and how they're setting and enforcing rules with religious aims. Oh, and while you're at it, throw in all the US politicians and political groups pushing an overtly fundamentalist Christian agenda. I'm not even going to mention the Intelligent Design crowd (again).

      Maybe I'm just overly sensitive to this kind of stuff, but it seems to me like there's been a significant shift towards fundamentalist religious thought in American society over the past 20 to 30 years. It bothers me. A lot. The Supreme Court potentially deciding that corporations can discriminate based on religious beliefs seems (to me) to be an important fork in the road.

      --
      I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 28 2014, @01:58AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 28 2014, @01:58AM (#22338) Journal

        I'm not really considering this one news item in isolation. In my opinion, it's just another sign that the power of organized religion is growing in the US. For instance, I occasionally watch "Survivor" -- mostly because my wife watches it -- and I remember feeling somewhat shocked a few years ago when some teams started holding prayer circles and some players started expressing very strong religious beliefs. Then there are shows like "The Voice", where many contestants discuss their various faiths and how they thank God / Jesus for everything that's gone right in their lives. Now add in the news stories about religion-based charter schools and how they're setting and enforcing rules with religious aims. Oh, and while you're at it, throw in all the US politicians and political groups pushing an overtly fundamentalist Christian agenda. I'm not even going to mention the Intelligent Design crowd (again).

        So do you have any actual evidence to support your concern? Evidence here being something that actually distinguishes your claim from something much weaker, like the hypothesis that there are a few strongly religious people in the US.

        Frankly, I'm more concerned about the people with strong religious views about economics, like Keynesians, who happen to be in positions of power.

        • (Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Friday March 28 2014, @03:22AM

          by wjwlsn (171) on Friday March 28 2014, @03:22AM (#22371) Homepage Journal

          I haven't looked up any statistics, if that's what you're asking. It's simply an opinion or a feeling based on 25 years of casual observation. Perhaps what I'm seeing is not a growth in the relative population of believers but simply an increase in their level of influence on political parties. I don't know, man... but it keeps me up at night.

          --
          I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 29 2014, @01:43PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 29 2014, @01:43PM (#22888) Journal

            I have similar amount of exposure to the US political system for a similar duration and I just don't see it. For example, the highest point of recent religious influence was in the 80s with the Moral Majority which dissolved at the end of that decade. There's nothing comparable to it today and the Moral Majority was at best moderately influential in elections even at its highest points. Even with our first evangelical Christian in office for eight years, we didn't see a significant religious presence in the US government (administration policy was dominated by the neo-cons who just aren't that religious). A prayer circle in a Survivor episode just doesn't that kind of political pull.

            And you'd have to be crazy to claim that religion (at least of the traditional sorts) has any influence at all in the current administration's policies. Instead, they seem to relish when they get a chance to tweak some religious group's nose.

            And things like Intelligent Design (which incidentally doesn't actually get that much support from the religious community) don't fare well when they're exposed to the ballot box. No attempt by an electable board in the US to insert ID into a school curriculum has actually survived the next election. I actually looked.

            Sure, there are a lot of religious people in the US, but they aren't religious in the same way. That's another thing that gets missed. They wouldn't agree to a religious theocracy because most groups would be oppressed by whoever actually got the power. While in the current form of government, you are free to practice your religion.

            Instead, I see a far greater threat from poor economic policies and economic dysfunction. These actually have the potential to create theocracies and other unpleasant societies. For example, the fascist and communist governments of the first half of the 20th century got into power because their societies were deeply broken and corrupt, not because there were a lot of religious people.

    • (Score: 1) by rochrist on Thursday March 27 2014, @08:45PM

      by rochrist (3737) on Thursday March 27 2014, @08:45PM (#22223)

      If Lobby Hobby prevails, it will have wide ranging repercussions. And yes, it will be advancing us towards a theocracy.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 28 2014, @02:16AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 28 2014, @02:16AM (#22346) Journal

        If Lobby Hobby prevails, it will have wide ranging repercussions. And yes, it will be advancing us towards a theocracy.

        Care to give an explanation for why you think this is the case?

        All I can say is that I don't see the emerging theocracy coming from this. For example, the corporations involved are religious by their bylaws (that right there restricts the case to a small number of possible beneficiaries) and are acting in ways consistent with their religious views. It's not gaming of the system in order to save money on health insurance or increase their political power.

        Meanwhile Obamacare, the law that is the instigation for this lawsuit really is unconstitutional in a number of ways, such as imposing abortion and birth control insurance mandates on employers with valid religious objections to those things. Perhaps, we should stop passing terrible law that leads to fertile opportunity for these judicial decisions which are supposedly so dangerous?