Competition doesn't work so well in rural Alabama. That's the problem.
When a gay man is going to their cousins wedding in rural Alabama and wants to take a road trip they need to be able to go to a restaurant and get service.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Speaks Out Against Indiana's 'Religious Freedom' Law
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Competition doesn't work so well in rural Alabama. That's the problem.
When a gay man is going to their cousins wedding in rural Alabama and wants to take a road trip they need to be able to go to a restaurant and get service.
If its rural Alabama the cousins getting married are really brother and sister, and likely under 18.
Bah. That only happens every once in awhile. Usually it's second cousins getting hitched, which is totally kosher.
A combination of marketplace competition and government control to ensure fair competition.
Indeed. Competition is great when it works. But without the Government enforcing a fair playing field, collusion would be rampant and manufacturers would be free to do whatever they wished.
Here is a by-product of your beloved private sector innovation: TV and computer electronics manufacturers fixed the prices of components for a decade until they were finally caught by European regulators. Who knows how much more innovation and wealth creation was hindered by the higher prices imposed by the electronics suppliers?
You can thank the Government for that one. There are rules that mean a manufacturer is granted only a limited period of exclusive patent use for their drug. Once it expires, any generic manufacturer can come in and compete. Without this rule, many drugs would remain under the sole ownership of a single pharmaceutical company, and prices would be dictated by the monopoly supplier.
And the Government ensures that the people who administer the surgery are qualified and licensed. Just because the Government does not control the economics of a service does not mean it does not play a vital part in it.
Competition does not always give us lower prices. Sometimes competition gives us the illusion of competition, whether that be from collusion or unrestrained monopolies, and the Government is there to ensure that fair competition exists.
Competition is by no means a capitalist creed, either.
No, it shouldn't apply to this bakery issue. By allowing competition to handle it you are giving people the idea that this kind of behaviour, denying service to somebody because of who they are, is acceptable. It's a recipe to split society and segregate it. Your solution is no different to the supermarkets of 1950 that had separate entrances for blacks and whites.
What makes you think you have special rights to object to serving somebody because of your religious beliefs? Do I have a right to deny service because of my non-religious beliefs? (The answer to that last question is categorically no, I don't, and any judge would laugh me out of their courtroom if I stated my non-religious belief as a defence).
In your capitalist-freedom utopia, would you have the right to refuse service to black people because it goes against your religious beliefs? Then why gay people?
As for your last point, you are right; a pizza is not the same as emergency medical treatment. I would like to know, however, where you draw the line. At what point does refusing service become too damaging to allow? Refusing to serve customers at a family grocery store? Refusing to allow two customers to watch a film at a family-owned cinema? Refusing to serve food to customers at a service station where the next station is 20 miles away? Refusing two people to use your fuel station telephone to contact a mechanic for their car tyre in the middle of nowhere?
When you say the media, you're lumping dozens of agencies and thousands of reporters and then declaring that the group failed to "widely publicize" a particular issue.
So, this claim is not only inaccurate, but unfair.
This gets especially difficult when you're going to lump blogs like rhreality together with NBC News or the NY Times.
Moroever, it's easy to confuse the coverage of Hobby Lobby's objection with the company's defense as it moved through the courts, including the US SCOTUS. There, lawyers didn't just argue that Hobby Lobby was merely trying to avoid offering four kinds of birth control, but rather that a closely-held corporation had the right to use religious belief in decisions about employee health care.
An article that discussed the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores might have skimmed over the actuality of the abortifacients because that stopped being a central issue especially once the case passed through the 10th Circuit Court.
Shakes head. Its unbelievable that the company would even THINK about raising this issue. What a bunch of lunatics. We need to have laws to protect ourselves from these type of people, not cater to them.
Everything I've read suggests the morning after pill prevents conception and does not cause abortion (http://ec.princeton.edu/questions/ecabt.html) so I see those as a non-issue that is only an issue in the mind of the uneducated (sadly, most of these people fall into that category).
Besides, I can quote you lines from the Bible where the "Lord" threatens to abort babies as a punishment to an evil Israel if you like. I'm not sure where most Christians get the idea that God is against birth control or even abortion given He's threatening to do it Himself in the Old Testament. Certainly every miscarriage known to man is a self-abortion. Do these Christians believe those babies go to Hell? I've found some that do. Does God even bother to send souls to wombs he knows will be aborted (seeing He knows the future)? Those questions never even enter these people's minds. When is a soul created? In the womb? Before? The Hindus and Buddhists (and even Gnostic Christians) believe in reincarnation so the physical and spiritual are separate things. To them, you enter the baby as a spirit inhabiting the body and it is that spirit that is made in the image of God (a spirit Himself), not your physical body. NDEs (near death experiences/ers) have claimed the soul may enter the body any time from a few months before birth to as much as a day after birth. I am simply not in a position to "know" this information. I can err on the side of caution, but I cannot speak for others.
Thus, I'm personally against abortion, but I do not believe I have the authority to tell other people what to do with their bodies and/or make those kinds of decisions. People have to decide for themselves what their beliefs are. What we have here are groups that are convinced abortion (at any stage, even one cell) is "murder" and therefore they think they have to step in for this unborn baby, but the Bible doesn't particularly support this conclusion either. Some passages imply you exist before the world was formed even. That clearly isn't referring to your human body or suggesting God cannot control where you are born. Certainly, I find a large distinction between a few divided cells and a fully formed fetus and people miscarriage all the time and I'm not ready to call God a murderer as such like these people call those that get or perform abortions so again, I'm not qualified to make these determinations and I'm not sure what makes them qualified either. We're talking about some people who would murder the doctor and think that's just fine to protect a clump of cells. To me, that is both sad and ironic.
I think some people have very narrow views that only include their own view and leave no room for anyone else to draw their own conclusions. It's not normal to go to the moon either, but we can do that today. Traditional birth control is also known to lower some forms of cancer by as much as 70%. Is "normal" always better? No.
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The overriding point is not how many birth control medications HL agreed to or disagreed with, but them and SCOTUS thinking that "religious freedom" includes the right to dictate to others how to live their lives. These kinds of "belief exemptions (from the law) and projections (restrictions on others)" are a corruption of the religious freedom standard. This line of religious thinking is strictly self serving, undermining the tenants of Christianity.
They did no such thing. All they said was they didn't want to pay for it. Employees were free to purchase it with their own money just as almost every employee in the country did prior to 2010.
Employer provided healthcare is part of your compensation. In other words, your own money. Even more so as employees contribute a portion of the healthcare premiums.
That is giving the corporation a special exemption. Why should they get special treatment? They should play by the same rules that all other corporations have to play by.
And the corporation wasn't paying for birth control specifically - they were paying for a health plan which happened to include it. If it included some things they AS A PERSON DON'T LIKE, so what? No person was being forced to use birth control. Religious objections are about USING it. Maybe I don't like paying for faith based organizations with my taxes or paying for nukes. The fact is, we live in a SOCIETY and the society determined that this is how health plans operate. If you have some pointy headed religious objection -- it should be tough nooogies.
Maybe I don't want to pay for faith based services with my taxes; or pay for nukes. Its against my religion. But hey, its part of the deal of living in a society that is not run by the pope, the Taliban or jesus.
This decision shows exactly why religion is ridiculous and should hold no place in modern society. Any nit wit can make up anything to be a sincerely held "religious" belief? And what makes a belief "religious" as opposed to just some "belief". I'll tell you -- nothing. Putting the word "religious" before the word "belief" adds nothing of substance. It is a fake and false construct.
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Lets look at Justice Ginsberg's dissent in Hobby Lobby, which accurately captures why Hobby Lobby was simply the Catholic Justice's bullying the rest of the justices (and us) and favoring their religion over others:
34 BURWELL v. HOBBY LOBBY STORES, INC.
GINSBURG, J., dissenting
. . . In the Court’s view, RFRA demands accommodation of a for-profit corporation’s religious beliefs no matter the impact that accommodation may have on third parties who do not share the corporation owners’ religious faith—in these cases, thousands of women employed by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga or dependents of persons those corporations employ. Persuaded that Congress enacted RFRA to serve a far less radical purpose, and mindful of the havoc the Court’s judgment can introduce, I
dissent. . . .
Would the exemption the Court holds RFRA demands for employers with religiously grounded objections to the use of certain contraceptives extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations (Christian Scientists, among others)?31 According to counsel for Hobby Lobby, “each one of these cases . . . would have to be evaluated on its own . . . apply[ing] the compelling interest-least restrictive alternative test.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 6. Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.
The Court, however, sees nothing to worry about. Today’s cases, the Court concludes, are “concerned solely with the contraceptive mandate. Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer’s religious beliefs. Other coverage requirements, such as immunizations, may be supported by different interests (for example, the need to combat the spread of infectious diseases) and may involve different arguments about the least restrictive means of providing them.” Ante, at 46. But the Court has assumed, for RFRA purposes, that the interest in women’s health and well being is compelling and has come up with no means adequate to serve that interest, the one motivating Congress to adopt the Women’s Health Amendment.
There is an overriding interest, I believe, in keeping the courts “out of the business of evaluating the relative merits of differing religious claims,” Lee, 455 U. S., at 263, n. 2 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment), or the sincerity with which an asserted religious belief is held. Indeed, approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be “perceived as favoring one religion over another,” the very “risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.” Ibid. The Court, I fear
has ventured into a minefield, cf. Spencer v. World Vision, Inc., 633 F. 3d 723, 730 (CA9 2010) (O’Scannlain, J., concurring), by its immoderate reading of RFRA. I would confine religious exemptions under that Act to organizations formed “for a religious purpose,” “engage[d] primarily in carrying out that religious purpose,” and not “engaged. . . substantially in the exchange of goods or services for money beyond nominal amounts.” See id., at 748 (Kleinfeld, J., concurring).
* * * For the reasons stated, I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
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Actually none of this would even being discussed if the government had not decided what should be covered in a healthcare plan. If Hobby Lobby, or any employer for that matter, didn't cover something you wanted covered, go work some place else that does. If Hobby Lobby then had trouble getting employees, then maybe the would be forced to change their policies.
I agree with a previous poster that insurance has morphed from something that was meant for catastrophic health issues to someone else paying for what we used to pay for as individuals. I mean why should I pay for insurance to pay for a Dr. visit. Just lower the premium and let me pay for the Dr. visit. Actually until the ACA, I had a High Deductible policy and an HSA. Worked well for us, but then the government got involved.
Also, I am a male, why should my policy be forced to cover birth control?
In my opinion this whole debate about the HL case is not about religious freedom, but an ever increasingly powerful government controlling more and more of our lives and choices.
I agree with a previous poster that insurance has morphed from something that was meant for catastrophic health issues to someone else paying for what we used to pay for as individuals. I mean why should I pay for insurance to pay for a Dr. visit. Just lower the premium and let me pay for the Dr. visit. Actually until the ACA, I had a High Deductible policy and an HSA. Worked well for us, but then the government got involved.
Also, I am a male, why should my policy be forced to cover birth control?
In my opinion this whole debate about the HL case is not about religious freedom, but an ever increasingly powerful government controlling more and more of our lives and choices.
Apparently, you plan to never marry, or have children?
Either way, If you want to argue this, let's open yet another thread regarding the ACA, or better yet, post in one of the already existing ones. I'll leave it with this: Keep going on with your opinion that the ACA is about controlling your lives; without the ACA, my life would be absolutely hellish, as I could be bereft of my wife, and a father to motherless children.
BL.
So you blame the gov't for trying to ensure fair treatment to both men and women, instead of some obnoxious corporation suing to try to get special treatment for some made up myth?
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Should a women complain about prostrate exams, testicular cancer coverage and Viagra? That's some distorted world view there. If I don't want it, my employer's health insurance coverage shouldn't carry it? Okay, lets go through every medication and treatment one by one -- that's nuts.
Viagra is a much closer example than the others, as it compares elective treatment options. His reference was birth control, not coverage for pap smears or something similar.
In other words.. Paying for someones indiscretions. Thats all any of this is really about and everyone damn well knows it.
Exactly. Hobby Lobby's owners are injecting themselves between their employees and doctors based on their own religious logic because of the structure of health care policies.
Does Hobby Lobby also want to make decisions in people's 401Ks?
This assumes there's a direct linkage between employee health care and employment opportunities.
You might get married. Moreover, health care is rarely an ala carte system, so why should a woman pay for prostate exams? Or Viagra?
Not really. Hobby Lobby has argued that by covering this on their health care plan, their religious freedom is affected. However, the religious freedom of their employees gets traded in the exchange. The balance test should have recognized that the ethics of birth control rest with the individual patient, not the company that sponsors the health care plan.
Hobby Lobby injected themselves into an ethical equation they didn't belong.
Considering that male sperm are a key reason behind the need for birth control, it seems like an odd question to ask.
The right wing, conservative religious Christians rationalize JUST LIKe THIS. It's why it's impossible to have an honest discussion with them on these kinds of issues. Spin it any way you want, but denying people coverage on their health insurance as their employer based solely on the employer's religion IS religious discrimination.
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Exactly, well said.