Hobby Lobby and the End of the World

The Supreme Court released a rather minor ruling in favor of religious freedom on Monday, and from the reaction on the left one might have thought that American womanhood had been consigned to a cruel fate of bare feet and pregnancy. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth resulted from a decision that the staunchly Christian and anti-abortion people who own the Hobby Lobby chain of stores, as well as a relatively small number of other similar-minded owners of “closely held” companies won’t be required by Obamacare to provide insurance coverage for their employees ‘abortifacient costs, and it would seem that a “Handmaiden’s Tale” type of theocratic patriarchy has been instituted as a result.

Any women toiling for the Hobby Lobby chain of stores will still be able to purchase contraceptive coverage that the company will still be be forced to pay for under an arrangement that provides a mere fig leaf of moral distance, and of course they can fornicate to their hearts’ content with the easily affordable coverage they can purchase out of their own pockets, but the Court’s failure to force the company’s owners to directly participate is regarded as a dangerous blow to women’s rights. The White House grouched that “women’s health will be jeopardized,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg served up an outraged dissenting opinion that predicted “havoc,” journalists were bemoaning “an enormous expansion of corporate rights,” and the “Tweets from the left spewed a more foul-mouthed assessment. It all seems disproportionate, given how very narrow the decision was, but at least those foul-mouthed “Tweets” had the virtue of unvarnished honesty,

The White House’s claim that women’s health is jeopardized only makes sense if the life-saving contraceptives in question work only when paid for by employers with a fig-leaf arrangement to provide them moral distance, and its official claim that “women should make personal health decisions for themselves” will be quickly recanted when it argues in an upcoming case that the nuns of the Little Sisters of the Poor shouldn’t be able to decide to forgo contraceptive coverage. Ginsburg is predicting “havoc” because of the slippery slope that slides down from a decision that people should be allowed to follow their own consciences rather than a Democrat-passed and Democrat-signed law about contraceptives, apparently because an unruly populace will start to wonder why it has to put up with any number of other bossy and stupid rules that it never voted for, but she’ll ever admit that on the other side of that metaphorical mountain there is a slippery slope that descends into her preferred judicial precedent that if the government can force staunchly Christian and anti-abortion people to pay for abortifacients there’s nothing it can’t do. Those journalistic complaints about the “enormous expansion of corporate rights” come from journalists employed by fat-corporations that have no moral objections to anything except Republicans, and as always eager they’re to follow the storyline about the Republicans’ “war on women” and their mythical crusade against contraception.

So we’ll at least acknowledge the frankness of that fellow calling himself “ginge” who tweeted an obscene suggestion for Hobby Lobby, religion, and America. In the requisite 26-or-less characters he succinctly summed up the left’s disregard for the rights of businessmen or anybody else with viewpoints differing from the post-modern consensus, for the ancient religious convictions that still give rise to such irritating disagreements, and for a country that has traditionally allowed such dissent. The modern left expects conformity, on almost every issue but especially on matters of sexual behavior, and anyone with qualms about the extermination of fetuses or the celebration of homosexuality are to keep quiet about it, so even a narrow and five-to-four Supreme Court decision to the contrary is irksome. One might well wonder who is trying to impose their moral values on others in this case, but such wonderings are an invitation to anarchy.

— Bud Norman

Hooray for Hobby Lobby

None of our hobbies require the kinds of materials that are sold by the Hobby Lobby chain, and thus we have never so much as entered one of its stores, but it has nonetheless joined Koch Industries and the Wham-O Corporation as one of our favorite companies.

Hobby Lobby enjoys a stellar reputation for the quality and value of its goods, and by all accounts treats is customers and workers according to the highest standards of business ethics, but the reason for our newfound enthusiasm is the company’s legal challenge to one of the more appalling provisions of Obamacare. The widely hated health care reform law dictates that all companies provide insurance covering abortifacients to their employees, and the same Christian convictions that cause Hobby Lobby’s ownership to treat its customers and employees by the highest standards of business ethics also oppose any form of abortion, so the company has boldly vowed to take its conscientious objections all the way to the Supreme Court.

Even the most administration-friendly media are expecting Hobby Lobby to prevail, and we hope they are right. Compelling people with a moral revulsion to abortion is tyranny, as well as an absurd contradiction of the left’s self-righteous claim of being “pro-choice,” and if it is allowable within the constitution it is impossible to conceive what is not. The Supreme Court has already decreed that a constitution clearly intended to impose restraints on government power does not restrain the government from forcing individuals to purchase insurance they do not want or need, and if anyone engaged in commerce can be compelled to act against his conscience there are no limits.

An administration bent on enforcing the most disastrous provisions of its signature legislative accomplishment, except the ones that are most likely to hamper its party’s chances in the next election cycle, will expect to reap political advantage from its totalitarian power-grab. They’ll cite the case as an example of the opposition’s “war on women” to strengthen a grip on the young and unmarried women’s vote, portraying Hobby Lobby as a corporate villain working in cahoots with blue-nosed and moustache-twirling Republicans intent on inhibiting the consequence-free sex lives of the more hip-and-up-to-date segments of modern society, and they’ll no doubt find a susceptible audience among the younger female cohort. So far as we can tell Hobby Lobby has no rules regarding its employee’s sexual dabblings, save for a refusal to pay for its outcomes, but this will be of little matter to women who regard federal subsidies for their already affordable contraception expenses a natural right. We constantly assure our distaff Democrat friends how ardently we desire to live in a society where their sexual practices and contraception needs are none of our damn business, but they continue to insist that it be a matter of public policy.

Hobby Lobby’s admirably pro-choice position deserves support, and we’re almost tempted to take up scrapbooking as a pastime so we’ll have reason to patronize their business.

— Bud Norman