This week five intelligent but seemingly senile old men started an argument that could threaten to tear this country apart. I’m speaking, of course, about the Hobby Lobby decision and the repercussions that will echo through the land for the foreseeable future.
Many of my friends of the legal persuasion seem to think that this was just an extension of The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed 21 years ago by a Democratic congress and signed by Bill Clinton. It’s not. If it is an extension of anything that preceded it, it is an extension of The Court’s Citizens United decision in which, they established, ludicrously, that a corporation was a person.
The current decision has nothing to do with protecting the religious rights of David Green the president, CEO, COO and grand high muck-i-muck of Hobby Lobby. Mr. Green’s religious rights are not at risk here. He can believe and act as he wishes. His company, according to American Law, before the Hobby Lobby decision, cannot. And it’s in the interpretation of that difference that the problem lies. It’s in that specific place, that the Supreme Court has once again, made the illogical and ludicrous claim that a corporation is the same thing as a person, when in fact a corporation is the antithesis of a person.
When the Supreme Court decided in Citizens United that corporations were indeed people and therefore had the same rights of free speech and that said rights gave those corporations the right to donate all the money they wanted to political parties and causes because that donation was the same as an individual’s right of free speech they opened the door to a firestorm of ridiculous claims based on the same mistaken logic that has now led to Hobby Lobby and will in the future, lead to a tsunami of like claims, that will eventually tear our constitution, which was set up in part, to protect us from these same religious freaks, apart. The key to the whole dispute is not religious freedom or the rights of women or the ACA; the key is the difference between a person and a corporation.
So let’s look at that again, because despite all indications that the world has been over it ad nausea, the difference still seems to have eluded five old men who are probably past their prime and maybe, shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions that affect others.
I start with the premise that a corporation is not a person but a tool, used by persons to afford some certain advantage that they wish to obtain in the course of doing business. There are two basic reasons for a person to form a corporation. The first is to cloak his business in a blanket of liability and tax protections. Generally speaking it keeps him from getting sued for his actions as head of a business that is incorporated, or in our current climate, from going to jail for the criminal activities of that business. It also affords the business certain tax advantages not available to individuals.
The other reason for forming a corporation is to issue stock either in order to make money for ones self or to enlarge and expand the businesses ability to compete in the marketplace. Both reasons are legitimate, the second slightly more morally stable, but both are accepted tools of business. No one forces anyone else to form a corporation, it is done by persons, to gain advantage in the marketplace, but once a corporation is formed, the person who forms it, turns over certain rights and responsibilities to that corporation.
If David green wanted to be able to dictate his religious convictions to his employees, he never should have incorporated Hobby Lobby. He should have kept it a DBA or other form of personal business in which he obtained no advantage from the government. But once he filed for incorporation, once he agreed to give up his personal rights and abide by the rules of the government in order to obtain certain business advantages he was then bound by the rules of government and no longer had the right to bind his employees to his religious convictions. This is just a logical progression.
This made perfect sense to most of us, Mr. Green not included, until five senile old men decided that a corporation was a person and had religious rights. Now think about that. A corporation has religious rights. Have you ever heard any more ridiculous statement in your life? If you think that statement is true, as does Mr. Green, than General Electric, if it were run by a Catholic could shut off your electricity on Sunday or if by a Jew on Saturday.
The First Amendment guarantees freedom to practice any religion you choose. That’s all. It doesn’t give anyone the right to proselytize or to force their religion on anyone else. Of course all religions do that. No true believer is satisfied to just practice his or her religion. They all want everyone else to believe what they do. I’ve never been able to figure out why true believers feel obligated to force their beliefs down everyone’s throats, but it is, unfortunately, an unassailable fact. That is exactly what David Green is doing with his company Hobby Lobby. He isn’t satisfied with being against contraception, he is going to force everyone who depends on him to earn a living, to buy his bullshit.
It would still not be acceptable but it would have, at least, seemed more so, if he had tried to accomplish his goal with a company that had not been accepting of government advantages, obtained through its corporate status. But like most self-involved people David Green wanted it both ways. He wanted the financial and liability protections of the government under the corporate blanket and he also wanted to foist his beliefs onto his employees regardless of their religion. It seems, due to a senile Supreme Court, that he has accomplished his devious goal, at least temporarily. Let’s hope that either Obama or his Democratic replacement will find a couple or more judicial seats to fill during the next few years, seats that will get this country back on a path to logical interpretation of the constitution, Let’s hope that we get a couple of new judges that understand the simple difference between a person and a corporation before the money from Citizens United that is destroying our democratic electoral process and the religious hogwash from Hobby Lobby that is denying people their human as opposed to religious rights, completely stamp out the last vestiges of sanity in this country.