I came across this article about Hobby Lobby being forced to close all its stores by Obamacare's mandate that health insurance must provide coverage for birth control. I've seen comments claiming it's a fake, that closing the stores was never under consideration, but Hobby Lobby is fighting the mandate in court on grounds of restricting religious freedom. To be fair, while the Right wing has been guilty of taking this same stance on plain old birth control pills, this protest is specifically about what they call "abortion causing drugs" like the morning after pill, emergency contraception and the week after pill.
Christians being persecuted for standing firm on religious principle
1) I'm not up on the details of all these contraceptive drugs but I know at least Plan B, the morning after pill, does not work by inducing a post conception abortion. It works by suppressing ovulation during the one or two days after sex when there may still be viable sperm in the area. I hope it turns out that none of these pills technically causes an abortion so that these self-righteous priss-buckets will have spent tens of thousands in legal fees just to go to court and get educated about the biology of emergency contraception, completely flushing their entire legal position and hopefully making them feel just a little bit silly.
2) Employers provide benefits to compensate their employees. One benefit is health insurance. Another popular benefit is a paycheck. If a Christian employer claims the right to censor what can be purchased with one kind of benefit, why not the other? The employee's paycheck comes directly from the employer's funds, so it is employer money being used to pay for whatever the employee wants, why doesn't the employer get to use the same argument and restrict what can be purchased with his funds? Health insurance claims are paid by the insurance company, not the employer, so coverage for contraceptives would not be funded by the employer. No threat to the good man's religion at all, see? The insurance itself is what's provided and funded by the employer, and to say that providing insurance that could be used for abortion drugs but most likely will not is no different from providing a paycheck that could be used to buy human babies for use in satanic rituals but most likely will not.
3) I believe the courts have already sorted out the legal position on these conscience claims. Since Hobby Lobby is a privately owned company, it is a separate entity from its owner and cannot itself hold a religious belief. Hobby Lobby is not a Christian, then, so the company is free to obey the coverage mandate with unmolested conscience.
4) I have always wanted a Christian to explain this to me. I am puzzled by the Christian anti-abortion stance. On the surface, it seems obvious, if they regard abortion as murder then it is the same stance they take on murder, don't do it, it's immoral. But if an unborn fetus, even an embryo, even a cluster of dividing cells a few hours post conception is a human being with a soul, then it is subject to the same Christian rules as all humans. If it is born it will be immediately guilty of original sin and will be "of this sinful world" until such time that it is saved by accepting Jesus as savior and repenting of sin. Just by being born it assumes the unbearable, deadly burden of human sin, through no choice of its own, and now must make the right steps to rectify the problem and save itself from eternity in hell. Am I right so far, Christians? Some believe that infants and children are free of the consequences of sin until they reach an age of mature understanding, so if a toddler dies before it could possibly find Jesus and get saved, no foul, it gets a free pass to salvation and heaven. So, clearly an unborn human qualifies for that deal, too, since it is understood that we are "born" into sin, not conceived into it. If abortion (murder) sends the unborn human soul directly to God without suffering temptation, free will, sin, and the ever so twisty path that may lead to redemption but may wind up eternally damned instead, why isn't abortion the single greatest gift anyone could give to a human being? It's a free pass to be with God, who wouldn't want that for their child?
I expect the answers would be something along the lines of God intended for us all to experience birth and have free will and find our own path to his Light, so abortion is directly opposed to the will of God. Well, yeah, I get that, it's wrong to deny a human the chance to be born and have free will and all that because it's not God's will, but we already established abortion is wrong, right? It's murder, we started there, so the woman is guilty of murder and opposing God's will for the unborn child. Fine. But the kid still gets a free ticket to heaven and doesn't have to be dirtied by the sinful world, so it's still a great deal for him! Wouldn't any mother be willing to sacrifice her own soul and commit murder so that her child could be guaranteed a place with God?
Doesn't this say, at least, that abortion is like every other sin, it cannot be distilled into a simple, compact little tablet to swallow as part of a simple moral code.
5) Which is another problem with this Christian conscience issue. Without context, it isn't proper to judge the absolute right or wrong of any action. Christian self-righteousness makes it very easy for them to see that what other people do is immoral and crank out the standard righteous condemnation for it. But I guarantee there is a situation where, if the Christian truly has a soul, he would concede that abortion (or murder, or any other sin) is the right thing to do, sin or not. God will forgive, the Christian would believe. And that is where this ridiculous notion of religious freedom should end. No sin is absolute, and Christians do not implicate themselves in others' sin when they step back and just live and let live. God wants free will choices, right? You interfere with God's will when you deny people their right to their own moral code.
So anyway, I dove down into the comments at the bottom of the article, and I became most awfully afraid. There are people there who believe "Christians are being trampled underfoot" because they can't exercise their religious belief in controlling what other people do with their employment benefits. Satan's children and his minions are in control and only God can save us. Please, God, come now! Save us, oh Lord, save us from government mandates that protect evil sluts from Your righteous fury when they fornicate and mock Your law!
Seriously, it's a level of hysteria I'd expect to see from someone who, maybe, is forced to watch her little girl die slowly in agony because the government has mandated that Christians may not receive medical care in our society and must wear a yellow cross sewn to their clothes to identify them as lesser citizens. Or maybe if Christians were being herded onto reservations and forced to livein squaller without adequate food or shelter. Or maybe if the Christian slave trade had just been legalized and all of Jesus's followers had been taken into captivity to be sold as slaves. But what is this about, this babbling jumble of terror wrapped up in a persecution complex? For God's sake, it's about health insurance!! It's about Christians being forced---shudder!---against their religious convictions to live and let live.
You know, I get carried away with hyperbole when I'm really into making a point. But when I do, I'm fully aware that I'm blowing it up, pressing it out, for full dramatic effect. Are these people aware at all of how hysterical they are? Over health insurance coverage for people they don't even know for procedures they don't even understand? When they cry out to God to return and save his people from this misery, do they realize that God was around when people in this country were literally bought, sold, and owned as property by other human beings? Do they know he watched while terrorists flew our own airplanes into our own buildings and killed a bunch of our own people in front of our helpless eyes? And God was here when our ancestors showed up on this continent and began doing a real "Satan's children and his minions" number on the native Americans living here? And back in the glory days in the mother land, God saw Catholics burn Protestants alive and then saw Protestants come to power and do the same to Catholics?
And without irony they will cry out to God to save them from this bitter, evil time in which we have "crashed down to rock bottom." Literally, this is the lowest we could ever go, the absolute maximum value of despair, the darkest depths of depravity and oppression. For Hobby Lobby yea verily may rise up upon its Christian principles only to fall down upon the ruins of Christian civilization, and lo the craft stores shall pull shut their doors and shut out the wicked world that hath gravely wounded them.
Read the comments and weep for the lost for they have no hope of finding their way. What in the world do you do with people like this who are so wrapped up in unhappy delusions of their own creation that they can't find their way to reality anymore?
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