by William Thornton » Fri Jul 04, 2014 7:14 am
Sandy is as of now wrong. Corporations have certain first amendment rights. It is a thorny issue.
But I would ask my mod/lib friends to set aside the corporate hating and Democratic talking points, and for the piece linked above by Campbell-Reed, the buzzword rich women's rights stuff and consider the matter from this viewpoint.
Hobby Lobby is a closely held corporation, not a person, just a person for legal purposes. That's what corporations are. It's big but there are gazillions of small corporations. I'd bet many BLers are part of some either by ownership or employment. I'm part of a very small family corporation. What we do is as personal as if there were no corporate structure and the family all paid portions of every bill as a personal expense. Is there any real difference between my acts and the acts of the family corporation? Not really. If the corporation had a female employee (we have none) who, in the interest of controlling their bodies and reproductive health, decided to have a full term baby ripped from her womb and dismembered, should I and a few other family members be forced to pay for that? Is there some reason that gummit could not impose such a requirement that companies pay for partial term abortions of their employees if gummit so deemed it in the public interest?
You might argue that Hobby Lobby is far beyond what should be considered a closely held yet public corporation, perhaps that will be litigated, but the court made some provision for such entities and their religious beliefs. No one knows where it might go. Bruce speculates that Muslim corporations might require burqas of their female employees, and praying five times a day. That's a bit of nifty speculation. Others speculate that corporations might refuse to serve certain races. All that is shrill nonsense at this stage. Protecting religious freedom is a complicated thing. I see no lessening of the complexity.
I'd be more worried about gummit driving certain unfavored groups out of the commercial life of our nation under the guise of public welfare.
Since gummit has created a business environment that makes certain corporate structures advantageous, indispensible actually, to modern commerce, could gummit so act as to punish those individuals who wanted to engage in commerce in our society and maintain their moral principles? And could gummit act in response to certain constituencies so as to drive those of certain religious convictions from the economic life of our nation through both corporate law and health care or other mandates. You bet gummit could, would, and given the freedom to act, some legislative bodies would do so in a heartbeat. Although Campbell-Reed had a caveat about gummit requiring health care to be paid for by businesses, one might reasonably assume that she or those of similar mind would readily push gummit to so act.
If I were a big bidness hater like Sandy, or feel that the gummit should force, with guns and blood if necessary, citizens to act against their beliefs in order to make them pay for the health care of others, a position Timothy takes and others here, I'd might be worried about where this can go. I fear the power of gummit more than some fundy business owner. The former has guns, armies, and bullets. The latter has very little power.
My stray thoughts on SBC stuff may be found at my blog,