Why Women Aren't People (But Corporations Are)

But you are hateful enough to have taken part in and supported the war crimes against the people of Afghanistan, Baldimo.

Yes but people aren't people, corporations are! We're just trying incorporate Afghanistan!

William Rivers Pitt | Land of the Free, Unless You're a Woman
Friday, 04 July 2014 09:15 By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Land of the free, unless you're a woman(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)The flags are fluttering, the backyard barbecues are blazing, and the Souza marches will strut into the sky to greet the grand thudding starbursts of fireworks. It is the Fourth of July in these United States, our annual national celebration of freedom.

What a sad joke.

Not long ago, five men on the Supreme Court handed down their decision in the already-infamous Hobby Lobby case. In it, they ruled that the owners of "closely-held" companies with "sincere religious beliefs" can deny medical coverage for certain forms of contraception, if such forms of contraception go against those religious beliefs.

The immediate talking point deployed by those in favor of the ruling claimed that only forms of contraception such as the "morning-after pill" and the IUD are affected by this ruling, but the Justices weren't done yet. According to the Associated Press, "The Supreme Court has left in place lower court rulings in favor of businesses that object to covering all methods of government-approved contraception. The justices' action Tuesday is a strong indication that their decision a day earlier extending religious rights to closely held corporations applies broadly to the contraceptive coverage requirement in the new health care law, not just the four pregnancy prevention methods and devices that the court considered in its ruling."

The high court's male majority went to elaborate lengths to explain that their decision was limited and narrowly construed, but don't tell that to the nearly 100 other companies that intend to deny these medical services to their own employees:

Monday's Supreme Court decision in favor of the company and Conestoga Wood of Pennsylvania for refusing to pay for contraception in health insurance affects far more than the 15,000 employees between them. The Supreme Court's decision allows closely held companies (corporations with more than 50 percent of stock owned by five or fewer individuals) to opt out of the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate. There are at least 80 other companies fighting to be the next Hobby Lobby.

If they do, the national implications would be huge. Despite what "closely held company" sounds like, these aren't all small, family-owned businesses. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent, candymaker Mars Inc., with 70,000 employees, qualifies as a closely held company. Cargill does too and it takes in more than $136 billion in annual revenue.

It took just about 48 hours for the petentrating concerns raised in Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent to flower: "On Tuesday, the Court indicated that its ruling applies to for-profit employers who object to all twenty forms of birth control included in the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, not just the four methods at issue in the two cases decided on Monday. It’s bad enough that the Court privileged the belief that IUDs and emergency contraceptives induce abortion over the scientific evidence that clearly says otherwise. With Tuesday’s orders, the conservative majority has effectively endorsed the idea that religious objections to insurance that covers any form of preventative healthcare for women have merit."

Writing for the majority, Justice Alito bent logic into bold new shapes by claiming that this ruling actually serves to protect the rights of individuals, and that the entire concept of "corporate personhood" is intended to protect the rights of the employees of corporations. Actor and activist George Takei, however, was having none of it: "In this case, the owners happen to be deeply Christian; one wonders whether the case would have come out differently if a Muslim-run chain business attempted to impose Sharia law on its employees."

The decision in the Hobby Lobby case is many things. It is the continued elevation of Christianity over all other religions, and over the choice to hold no religion, in a country where no single religion is supposed to hold sway. It is yet another flat declaration that corporations have more rights than people. It is a purely political action to strike a blow against the Affordable Care Act, the right's most beloved boogeyman. It is a very sneaky back door through which alleged "people of faith" can peddle their onging discrimination against LGBT employees.

And, of course, it is simple, old-fashioned woman-hating from top to bottom.

It is another jarring attempt to remake the United States according to the opinions of men like Utah's Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who agrees with the court's decision because women only use contraception for "recreational behavior," and not for significant and pressing medical reasons or motivations of personal freedom. It is an attempt to remake the United States according to the opinions of men like Washington Post columnist George Will, who recently argued that women on college campuses only cry "rape" because they want the "coveted status" of being a rape survivor.

Two years ago, Cecily McMillan was participating in a peaceful Occupy protest in New York City when a police officer came up behind her and grabbed her violently by the breast. Like any normal woman, McMillan threw an elbow to stop the assault. For this, she was convicted of assaulting a police officer and sentenced to 90 days at Rikers Island. It could have been seven years.

McMillan was recently released, and gave a harrowing description of the conditions she and the other women incarcerated at at Rikers endured: women dying, women bleeding vaginally for hours, women with cancer, diabetes and other ailments who were denied medical treatment while being stacked like so much cord wood in overcrowded bunk rooms.

McMillan is free now, but still in jail, incarcerated with every other woman in the Rikers Island that is these United States, thanks to the five men who handed down the Hobby Lobby decision. The food is better, and there are no bars on the doors, but it is a prison nonetheless, where women do not enjoy equal status, where women can and will be denied basic and necessary medical services, because somebody's bastardized version of Jesus considers them to be lesser creatures, and not nearly as important as a corporation.

Enjoy your "independence" day.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

"Hobby Lobby provided this (birth control) coverage before they decided to drop it to file suit."

Sally Kohn on Monday, June 30th, 2014 in a segment on CNN
Did Hobby Lobby once provide the birth control coverage it sued the Obama administration over?
Mostly True
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Hobby Lobby’s Supreme Court victory over the federal government’s contraception rule set off a fast-breaking wave of punditry on national TV. CNN brought in liberal pundit and contributor Sally Kohn, who panned the court’s 5-4 decision as disastrous and Hobby Lobby’s intentions as disingenuous.

"Hobby Lobby provided this coverage before they decided to drop it to file suit, which was politically motivated," she said.

We can’t determine if politics motivated the company, but we did wonder whether Hobby Lobby covered the types of birth control at issue in its lawsuit but dropped the coverage before filing its complaint.

The short answer: Yes.

The Green family, which founded Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma City in 1972, said as much in its original complaint.

The Greens re-examined the company’s health insurance policy back in 2012, shortly before filing the lawsuit. A Wall Street Journal story says they looked into their plan after being approached by an attorney from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty about possible legal action over the federal government’s contraceptives requirement.

That was when, according to the company’s complaint, they were surprised to learn their prescription drug policy included two drugs, Plan B and ella, which are emergency contraceptive pills that reduce the chance of pregnancy in the days after unprotected sex. The government does not consider morning-after pills as abortifacients because they are used to prevent eggs from being fertilized (not to induce abortions once a woman is pregnant). This is not, however, what the Green family believes, which is that life begins at conception and these drugs impede the survival of fertilized eggs.

At any rate, Hobby Lobby stopped covering those drugs in its plan and took the health care contraceptive mandate to court, represented by the Becket Fund.

The only caveat here is Hobby Lobby said it didn’t know it was covering the drugs.

"Coverage of these drugs was not included knowingly or deliberately by the Green family. Such coverage is out of step with the rest of the Hobby Lobby’s policies, which explicitly exclude abortion-causing contraceptive devices and pregnancy-terminating drugs," the company stated in its court filing.

Of note, company leaders do not have religious problems with other forms of birth control, such as the pill, condoms, diaphragms and sterilization, according to the family’s legal representation, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

Our ruling

On CNN, Kohn said, "Hobby Lobby provided this coverage before they decided to drop it to file suit."

The Christian-owned company did previously offer insurance plans that included coverage of a few contraceptives at issue in the case, namely morning-after pills, but reports suggest owners weren't aware they offered that coverage.

When the company found out -- in the wake of the contraceptive requirements that came out after the health care law -- the company stopped offering the drugs and took the contraceptive mandate to court.

Kohn’s statement is accurate but leaves out that Hobby Lobby says it unwittingly offered this kind of birth control coverage. We rate the claim Mostly True.

Who wants to listen to a community organizer? We are in all kinds of hurt from listening to one already.

Why are women so outraged over a single issue? Because the 5 ungulates on the S.C.

Last edited Sat Jul 5, 2014, 05:05 PM - Edit history (5)
have joined their little cloven hooves and decreed that the 14th amendment to the Constitution does not apply to women.

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

In the view of the ungulates, women in the U.S. are neither fully citizens nor fully persons.

This is why women are outraged. This goes way beyond the subject of birth control, as important as that is.


It's time to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment once and for all.

RALLY FOR EQUALITY IN D.C. ON SEPTEMBER 13:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025199633#post32

https://www.facebook.com/ERANOWCommunity/posts/758356017510837?stream_ref=10

TIRED OF THE WAR ON WOMEN? Tired of seeing congressional committees meeting on women’s issues with NO WOMEN present or testifying? Tired of earning less than men for doing the same job, being told what you can and cannot do with your own body by people you don’t even know, and being discriminated against just because you happen to be a woman?

IT’S TIME TO COME TOGETHER AND SAY “ENOUGH!” Mark your calendars—We Are Woman in partnership with ERA Action and Progressive Democrats of America is organizing a #Rally4Equality2014 in Washington, DC this September. More info is coming soon on ways you can help make this a successful event and support the cause, but for now, here's Step 1:

TAKE Our Pledge to VOTE: http://bit.ly/ipledge2vote and join our mailing list so we can keep you up-to-date on plans. We can’t make a difference until we are ALL speaking out at the ballot box! So vote, help others vote, and support only candidates who support your equality, not just in word but in DEED. Your vote counts, so use it and help others do the same!

http://eraactioncampaign.tumblr.com

We petition the Obama Administration to:
Vigorously support women's rights by fully engaging in efforts to ratify the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

There are currently 35 states that have ratified the ERA and legal analysis suggests we may need just three more states for women to have equal rights under our Constitution. We ask you to support our efforts nationwide, particularly in the states that have not yet ratified the ERA: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, N. Carolina, Oklahoma, S. Carolina, Utah, and Virginia. We also ask you to place your full support behind Congressional legislation to eliminate deadlines on the original 1972 ERA. It is time our Constitution protects the rights of women, and women need and deserve active participation in ERA advocacy from the White House.
Created: Jan 10, 2013

And tea party "activists" aren't community organizers?

Why Hobby Lobby could open a Pandora’s box of legal discrimination

The court’s opinion in the contraception case could lead to broader decisions against women, gay people and the disabled
July 3, 2014 8:30AM ET
by Peter Moskowitz @ptrmsk

Some effects of the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores will be relatively immediate: Women who work at companies with owners who decide it’s against their religious beliefs to provide birth control will lose free or cheap access to contraceptives such as the Plan B pill, IUDs and, potentially, condoms, as well as the most popular pill form of birth control.

But other consequences of the Hobby Lobby decision could take years to pan out, and they would affect not only contraceptives but also various women's rights as well as LGBT rights and the rights of the disabled.

Despite the assurance by Justice Samuel Alito in his majority opinion on Hobby Lobby that the implications of the case are narrow — solely focused on “closely held” companies and likely to affect only birth control — legal scholars say the ruling could open a Pandora’s box of court cases in which discrimination is justified under the rubric of religious freedom.

“I don’t think his assurances say this case won’t be applied to anything else,” said Kevin Russell, a partner at Goldstein & Russell, a law firm that represents cases before the Supreme Court. “It is going to arise again when someone sues over gender or sexual orientation discrimination.”

Russell says it may take a few years, but it’s not hard to imagine a case in which an employer decides to treat a woman differently than a man, or doesn’t provide equal health coverage to a same-sex couple, and justifies the decision by citing his or her religious beliefs. A case like that could easily wend its way up to the Supreme Court, according to Russell and other legal experts.

It’s hard to predict exactly what kind of cases Hobby Lobby will bring about, but there’s wide agreement that Monday’s decision was just the beginning of the story.

For one thing, Alito and the four other court conservatives for the first time argued that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which says the government can’t substantially burden a person's right to exercise his religion, can be applied to companies in the same way it is applied to people and nonprofits.

Companies can therefore legally be allowed to apply their owners’ religious beliefs to their employees. Alito insisted only smaller, privately held corporations would be affected by this ruling, pointing out that a public company has not yet used the RFRA in a court case. But Alito didn’t specifically bar one from doing so in the future.

Alito also insisted that the RFRA would likely be applied only to cases similar to Hobby Lobby, in which birth control is the main factor in religious objection. But some point out that his decision doesn’t explicitly prevent the RFRA from being used for other forms of opting out.

“He said that this case can’t be used for race discrimination, but there’s a whole lot that he didn’t say,” said Ian Millhiser, a constitutional policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. “What about gender? What about sexual orientation? As an objective matter, this is a very broad opinion.”

Legal experts also say Alito’s reassurances about the narrowness of Hobby Lobby don’t really matter. Previous Supreme Court cases that have cited narrowness have proved ineffective at preventing other courts from broadly interpreting the decision.

Take the recent history of another hot-button cultural issue — gay marriage. The spread of legal acceptance of same-sex marriage in the U.S. is based on the continued reinterpretation of similarly narrow legal rulings.

When the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that the state’s anti-sodomy law was unconstitutional, the justices took pains to say that their decision wasn’t an implicit endorsement of same-sex marriage. Just months later, the Massachusetts Supreme Court struck down that state's same-sex marriage ban, citing in part Lawrence v. Texas. And last year, the case was mentioned no fewer than eight times by the Supreme Court in its majority opinion striking down key parts of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Then, in its DOMA ruling, the Supreme Court said that DOMA wouldn’t specifically apply to states’ bans on gay marriage. But in the past year, several federal and state judges have used that decision to strike down statewide bans.

Legal experts say the Hobby Lobby decision could have a similar legal domino effect.

“In Lawrence v. Texas the justices said it can’t be used for same-sex marriage, and then the Supreme Court used it against DOMA,” said Mark Kende, a professor of constitutional law at Drake University. “So who knows what courts are going to do with this case? That’s the slippery slope.”

Eric holder has already opened that box. His decision not to prosecute the Black Panthers in Philadelphia did that. His interpretation of justice is discrimination.

Nice "Oh look a squirrel", cj.

Your lack of focus is what has you stalled at grade three.

Howard Zinn is a Marxist. That is your hero. That makes you a zero.

To those women who are buying extra at Hobby Lobby
to show their support for Hobby Lobby's victory:

China thanks you for your business.
They also want to let you know that some of the money going back to their shores will go toward forced abortions and contraception.

Just so you know what you are really supporting.

Cj: oh look, another squirrel, see see, over there!

You'll likely have grade three nailed after a couple more years.

GTFO Commie.

http://lonelyconservative.com/2014/07/everything-democrats-are-saying-about-hobby-lobby-decision-is-a-lie/

Cj: look look look, some more squirrels!

Would you like to comment on the subject? If you want to troll start a new thread.

A true conservative would notice that all businesses pass their costs onto the consumer so Hobby Lobby would simply have its rates raised to pay for the coverage they don't want to pay for but the insurance company will pay for.

So, the upshot of this is that Hobby Lobby would pay for what the USSC says it doesn't have to pay for. What a great idea, **** for brains.

What does that have to do with the outright lies from Democrats?