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Today, March 25th, the Supreme Court hears the Hobby Lobby case.
The question before the court is this:
If a law violates one’s religion, does one have to follow it? We have by fortuity and circumstance, brought ourselves so low to now ask of our court, to decide which of the two shall have predominance… Law or Religion.
If law wins, than religions must conform to the law; if religion wins, then to circumvent any law, one simply has to state it is against one’s religion.
There are good reasons for both sides, depending upon which predominates in your mind. If you think religion is above the government, then obviously you will think that as an individual, your government shall not make you do something your religion tells you is wrong…. Basically the law is compelling you to sin.
We’ve seen it before. Burkas: your religions dictates you wear them, and the law says you can’t for safety reasons… Withholding medical care for a child, your religion tells you to put faith into divine intervention, and when that turns out badly, the state sends you away for murder. Vaccinations. your religion tells you no, but the government says yes…..
In all those cases religion lost; here is why.
There were other people affected. Religion is a deep personal internal experience. and the law generally upholds that one has the right to adhere to doctrines if one wishes…. AS LONG AS THEY DO NOT HARM SOMEONE ELSE. The canon of law is very clear, that hurting other people, cannot be excused on the account of ones religions… The Burka ban is to protect from human bombs. The courts have said that if safety in a crowd is an issue for many other people, then the law can be changed to violate the harm-giver’s religion. The potential for harm controls the dynamics of the case.
Likewise the dead child not receiving medical care can be a very moving religious experience, but the child died. He obviously was harmed ant therefore the law trumps religion. The potential for harm controls the dynamics of the case.
Again the same is true over withholding vaccinations. Not being vaccinated creates a possible host-carrier for the disease sometime in the future… It is not just the subject at risk for failing to become vaccinated. Everyone else is susceptible to that carried organism. The potential for harm to many controls the dynamics of the case.
So we turn to birth control. One of which is abortion. Who could possibly be harmed over not insuring contraception? Is it really as cut and dried as Rush Limbaugh speaks, when he says it is all about him paying for Sandra Fluke to have sex? He’s paying and it isn’t even with him? Tant pis.
Prophylactics. Who gets harmed? That one is easy. Every person who picks up HIV for one. For two, gonorrhea and syphilis. For three, someone getting the herpes virus. Harm is endemic. And like vaccinations, harm can be unsuspectingly spread to others. Lack of free contraception could cause multiple spouses irreparable harm through no fault or wrongdoing of their own. Everyone has the right to intercourse, just as everyone has a right to their own Roth-IRA. But not everyone has an Roth-IRA now, do they? Many can’t afford it and so do without. Same with contraception. Therefore not funding free prophylactics causes irreparable harm to innocent people….
Chemicals, birth control pills and RU-486. Who gets harmed if these are unavailable? That one is easy. The future baby (def: humanness does not or will ever start until birth), the mother, the father, the grandparents, the great grandparents, the physician, society in general, future taxpayers… Quite a few harmed souls actually…. Withholding these birth control items is exactly on par with withholding antibiotics to a child dying from blood poisoning. Just as the child is suffering needlessly through no fault on its own, so is the pregnant woman suffering as is her child, though no fault of their own. Normally she would have gotten free contraception. But no, religion stepped in and now that is impossible.
Third is performed abortion. This is an emotional topic, that some equate with murder. The courts have flatly said it is not. Life begins at birth, always has, always will. Therefore performed abortions are perfectly legal, even though some people may not agree. And here the law is clear. They have the right to decide for themselves and not agree if they so choose, but they do not have any right to decide for others. No one does. That is embedded in the foundation of our founding documents…. That is the definition of freedom. One cannot say they for freedom and yet rail against choice. That is a scientific impossibility. Obviously what those well meaning people are trying to express is that they are all for freedom when it applies to them, but certainly not when it applies to others who have a different value system from them. Enforcing the right to free abortions, is like allowing burkas to be worn without restriction, fully knowing that suicide bombers are rampant in the crowds around you… Banning abortions for certain women, is the equivalent to telling the Israeli population, ” oh, sorry; no protection for you; you have to die if someone sets off a bomb, because you see, burkas are so sacred, we aren’t going to violate one of our tiny minority’s religious beliefs. If someone smuggles a bomb in under one, sigh, oh well.
If you are sharp about your wits, you picked up the clue I left you in the paragraph above. Right up there where I said..”they do not have any right to decide for others”….. Probably Conservatives will pick it up faster than contraception supporters. “Wait a minute” they will say, “see, that is exactly what you are doing to us by making us pay for contraception when we don’t want to cough up the money for it. You are deciding for us, what we have to do…”
And that is exactly right…. We are.
If you remember up at the top of this piece of writing where I stated this case was to decide the supremacy of law versus religion? Well that is the caveat. In religious circles we are deciding what one needs to do. We are saying that contraception will be available to everyone through their insurance free of charge…. In the legal realm that is the law. You can choose to follow it or not. If not, then beware of consequences. Why just today, I saw a Toyota that by my guess, chose not to follow the posted speed limit. He didn’t look too happy either…. We make decisions every day on whether to follow a law or not, and we choose to what degree we wish to comply… Some of us, unluckily, will pay a price…. But though angry, we really have no right to bring in religion…. Because it is a non-religious law….
In the religious world, we are however making a person (although admittedly in an extremely indirect and via a convoluted pathway, be associated with something he doesn’t wish… However, that is not a problem of our governmental courts. Religious issues are not in the bailiwick of the Supreme Court. It decides issues of law and order, and is forbidden on deciding on religion. Instead, religious issues need to be decided by a denominational or religious court if their denomination should happen to have them… If not, they should then be decided by that religion’s Inquisition or equivalent…. Then through whatever authority those courts have, they need to exercise their options of enforcing those religious edicts in ways that do not run up against the laws of the land…
A second issue is whether information or facts on file inside a Delaware Courthouse is also a real person. Are Corporations people too, as Romney once said? That is preposterous to even consider, but alas, so it will be one of the hinges on which this outcome depends. The sole point of this case is that a corporation (Hobby Lobby) is so sad, it’s heartbroken that it will have to pay for contraception for its employees, it cries every night and has insomnia. It can’t urinate correctly and has irregular bowel movements. As a result, this corporation is now suffering from malnutrition, and dehydration. Quite possibly, through all the duress and stress, this corporation has also suffered brain damage, causing its malignant depression. It might even have cancer….
If a corporation is not a person, then this case is simply dismissed. Corporations are subservient to human beings and therefore must confirm to the laws of the land in which they may find themselves. But if a corporation IS a person, then we have a battle over which person suffers the most, if free birth control is abandoned…. or…. no longer free…
If a corporation IS deemed to be a person… the next question for discussion, is when does that person-hood begin…. Did it start when it is born,upon the signing of its documents? Or, has it existed as a corporation ever since its idea was first conceived?
- In case you are waking up, you won’t get this story until noon.
The Daily Mail London just opened a can of worms on Benghazi….
Breaking News: The Daily Mail is reporting from inside sources that General Petreaus and the Ambassador Stevens were not informed that parts of the CIA had one day before, attacked the very same group of Libyan insurgents who returned the next day to attack at Benghazi. Furthermore, the Petreaus scandal was orchestrated by a rogue element of the CIA itself(7th floor) who were the ones behind the pushing of the FBI into investigating General Petreaus bedside manners.. (remember that fishiness of how the rogue FBI agent kept pushing his superiors? It makes sense now.)
Now get this. The same John Brennan who just testified to become the next CIA director, was who ordered the clandestine attacks the night before and who did not brief Petreaus, or the official side of the CIA, that they had done so.
So not only are Republicans completely wrong on Benghazi, they are now laughingstocks for every single word they said about it….
- We did know about the security threat.
- We did do something about it.
- We didn’t tell Obama, Clinton, Panetta, or Petreaus.
- All were in the dark, not to propagate deceit, but because they had no idea….
Every Republican needs to apologize to every Democrat starting now by getting down on their knees, and bowing their head to the ground in supplication… :)(Dick Morris can lick our toes).
One always fails if they bluster against competent people when all they have is their own hot air. That’s why good Democrats always win over bad Republicans.
Slammed by Obama in his press conference, where it was brought up that penalizing the UN Secretary who had no direct knowledge of Benghazi attack, McCain, Graham, Ayotte, and Johnson are right now, all running for political cover… However, earlier today before they got embarrassed for looking childish, petty, inept and unmanly, they had a press conference to illustrate the 5 unanswered questions that now need answered……
5. Why were we not prepared and have enough counteractive punch in place and on the ground to prevent the loss of life in Benghazi on September 11th.
4. Why were we going on with “oh, life is normal” on the morning of September 11, 2001 when on August 6th, we had a CIA dossier that explicitly said….“Bin Laden Determined to Attack US”…. Why? Why weren’t there forces employed? How could we have been so unprepared?
3. Why were we not prepared and were caught completely off guard on January 30th, 1968 when Viet Cong and North Vietnam staged a surprise offensive that was able to take over and hold the embassy in Saigon once thought impregnable, at the same time they attacked 100 major South Vietnam towns and cities…. How could we be so unprepared?
2. Why were we not prepared and why were we surprised on the morning of December 7, 1941 when four aircraft carriers were able to navigate across half the Pacific Ocean unseen, and launch two air attacks on our sleeping crew and battleships in Pearl Harbor? This is outrageous. How could we not be so unprepared?
1. Why were we not prepared and had adequate security aboard the battleship Maine, before it was sabotaged in the harbor of Havanna on on February 15th, 1898…. 266 people died… This is outrageous. How could we be so unprepared….
These are serious concerns. They need an open hearing.
Therefore they suggested a Watergate style hearing along the lines of Iran Contra Hearings, or a 9/11 Commission to clear the air, ask tough questions and get tough answers…. The order of importance they should start with, should be item number one and work their way back up to the least important intelligence failing of them all…. Benghazi.
It is called: perspective.
kavips 