Quote:
Originally Posted by The Mountaineer
I agree that it is disturbing that Supreme Court judges vote their ideology, not the Constitution. I don't care whether it's 5-4 liberal or 5-4 conservative, the Supreme Court should not be deciding cases based on its ideology.
By the way, the Hobby Lobby ruling applies to 90% of the companies in
America, so it does not affect only a few companies. Since 85% of larger companies provided contraception coverage before Obamacare, I'm not sure how many people actually will be affected.
But it's fair to debate why corporations are not held to the same standards as individuals. We can't be anti-semetic, gay basher, racist or anti-Muslim without risking hate-crime laws coming down on us (as it should be), but a corporation can go against the law on religious grounds.
While we're at it, why should churches NOT be taxed? There's all that free land and buildings and even income that bring in no tax dollars, so the rest of us, even if we don't belong to a church, have to make up the difference. The original intent was to avoid having the government punish a specific religion through taxation, but that may not apply any more.
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1. I agree that Supreme Court Justices often vote their ideology instead of interpreting the law correctly. It is a real shame.
2. I don't agree that the Hobby Lobby decision applies to 90 % of the companies in America. Although most of our population is employed by small businesses, it is unlikely that these business are "closely held" by a small group of people who all agree on religious principals.
3. Corporations, as "persons"
are held to the same standards as individuals. Your logic fails on two levels:
a. We
can be anti-semitic, racist, etc. so long as what we are doing is exercising our right of free speech. The hate crime laws relate to physically harming a person because of a demonstrable hatred reason, such as calling him by a racist epithet while assaulting him.
Actually, a corporation has less latitude in this area, particularly if it can be demonstrated that any of the attitudes you listed resulted in failing to hire or promote a person in the protected class.
b. Hobby Lobby did not go against the law. The Supreme Court affirmed that what Hobby Lobby wanted to do
complied with the law.
4. Churches are not taxed in compliance with Article One of the Bill of Rights.
The First Amendment clearly places the church outside the jurisdiction of the civil government: "Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Religion cannot be free if you have to pay the government, through taxation, to exercise it.
The IRS tax code specifies that in order to be considered for tax-exempt status by the IRS an organization must fill out and submit IRS Form 1023 and 1024. IRS states that churches need not submit the forms. They are automatically tax exempt.
--------- You might want to change this. It would require a Constitutional Amendment. The odds on accomplishing that are extremely low.
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