Opening Up A Can Of Worms

There is a case before the Supreme Court that they heard arguments earlier in the year that we are awaiting to hear the decision, that case is Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby is a Christian family owned business that does not want to cover birth control pills in their business health insurance. They claim that it violates their First Amendment rights.

I have always said that if the Supreme Courts allows that to reject coverage from birth control pills that it will open the flood gates for other religions to not cover other medical procedures. Well one of the conservative lawyers finally admitted that in a Congressional hearing. The hearing was on religious exemptions for anti-discrimination laws.

‘Religious Freedom’ Not to Serve Jews?
By Jay Michaelson
The Daily Beast
June 14, 2014

The same philosophy was on display this week in Congress, when Mat Staver of the U.S. Liberty Counsel—which, like its better-known cousin the Alliance Defending Freedom, works in courts and legislatures to carve out religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws—struggled to distinguish between a wedding photographer turning away gay customers and one turning away black or Jewish ones.

“I think that’s fundamentally different,” Staver said, when asked by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who is Jewish. Why? Because “she’s not saying ‘I don’t want to go to a wedding where there are people who are gay or lesbian.’ She’s saying she doesn’t want to photograph a celebration of same-sex unions.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler kept questioning Mr. Staver about “what ifs” a black couple was getting married and someone refused to photograph the wedding on religious grounds, what if…

Nadler, knowing he had him, said, “So suppose a photographer had a religious belief that she shouldn’t photograph a Jewish wedding?”

“I think it would be something she wouldn’t object to.”

But what if she did, Nadler pressed.

“She would have an issue there—a violation potential in that case.”

Bingo. What LGBT activists have been saying for years—that discrimination is discrimination—has finally been admitted. Protecting Jews from anti-Semitism is a “violation potential” of the anti-Semite’s religious freedom. The Liberty Counsel said Uncle.

When grant an exempt from the anti-discrimination laws based in religious grounds then you cannot discriminate against any religious beliefs, you cannot grant them for your religion it has to be for all religions.

What both [Houston Equal Rights Ordinance exchange between City Councilwoman Ellen Cohen and the aptly-named Paster Betty Riggle of Grace Community Church.] of these exchanges indicate is that, indeed, there is no difference between turning the gays away and turning the Jews, blacks, seniors, or women away. There are people with religious beliefs that disfavor all those groups. Just decades ago, Southerners argued that being able to keep their schools segregated was a matter of “religious freedom.” The only difference is that some discrimination is bad, but other discrimination is good.

Let us hope that the Supreme Court see the wisdom in rejecting Hobby Lobby’s exemption from covering birth control pills.