SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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?"
(Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Friday March 28 2014, @03:22AM
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
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.