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July 4, 2014: ‘Ain’t That America’
Published: Jul 01, 2014
Category:
Beyond Classification
When all the men but one vote one way and all the women vote the other, you know the issue is not just about the facts. So it was with the Supreme Court ruling on Hobby Lobby, which gives “closely held” companies whose owners have strong religious convictions the right not to pay for birth control for their female employees.
Of the many depressing messages sent to women here, two stand out:
1) The owners of Hobby Lobby are not sincere. Fact: “While it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm’s owners cite in their lawsuit…. The Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions.”
2) Equating contraception with abortion is only part of the owners’ agenda. The owners — “the largest individual donors to evangelical causes in America”— fund initiatives that would give businesses the right to discriminate against homosexuals. “There are really close legal connections between [Arizona’s anti-gay bill that was passed by the state legislature, then vetoed by the Governor] and the [Hobby Lobby] Supreme Court case,” says Emily Martin, vice president and general counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. “Ideologically, the thing that unites the two efforts is an attempt to use religious exercise as a sword to impose religious belief on others, even if it harms others, which would be a radical expansion of free exercise law.”
HeadButler.com keeps far away from politics. It’s divisive, there’s plenty of it elsewhere, and, as I often write, I think culture, not politics, is how change happens. [Proof: “Will & Grace.”] But this Hobby Lobby decision is not political in any way — it’s one more moral and cultural assault on women. And women are the soul of this site. Sorry, gents, but that’s fact. My modest demographic research tells me that most readers are female. And so does my wife. At dinner recently I mentioned an email I’d received from a man. “Stop right there,” my wife said. “You got email from a man?”
Strange country we live in. As John Oliver reported, we are well on our way to full marriage equality. At the same time, our evangelicals export hatred of gays — and their message has found a warm reception in Uganda. This is long, but brilliant:
For us, July 4th means a visit to the Boundary Waters — Ely, Minnesota — where the kids call our small person “Big City.” She loves it all: the go-cart in the parade, the backyard Olympics, the endless stories. What she doesn’t see: the likelihood that copper mining will come here and pollute the water.
Those two realities — a pristine environment threatened by commerce and the Hobby Lobby decision — have put a phrase running through my head: “Ain’t that America,” from a John Mellencamp song, “Pink Houses” about the gap between what we dream and what we live:
So here we are, strutting toward the apocalypse. Smart and stupid, givers and takers, the open-carry crowd and the saints of peace — we’re a hot mess. The holiday weekend is a good time to muse on these things. And to take some sustenance and joy from the good stuff.
See you Monday.
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“I was a coward. I went to the war.”
Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra
He did it his way.
