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A friend wrote this:
This country has truly gone MAD. We have gone down the rabbit hole, through the looking-glass. The solution is get health insurance OUT of employers’ hands… INDIVIDUAL Healthcare coverage. YOU decide what coverage you want, it has nothing to do with your employer, except to arrange for payroll deductions… like they do with parking permits, bus passes, etc. No “in network”, “out of network”, etc. Those who want coverage for contraception, abortion, other reproductive care, etc., could arrange for it. Your employer would have NO role/decision in what you select. It’s YOUR body, YOUR decision.
The Forward wrote this (the full article is here):
Earlier this month, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) cornered Mat Staver of the US Liberty Council into admitting that a photographer could object to photographing a Jewish wedding on “religious liberty” grounds. In May, Houston TX Pastor Betty Riggle admitted under questioning by City Councilwoman Ellen Cohen that stores could turn away Jews on religious reasons as well. Two separate incidents… both instigated by Jewish leaders at legislative hearings… but with the same result. The “slippery slope” of Hobby Lobby includes discrimination against Jews. Both of these processes were Talmudic in tone. In each case, the conservative Christian activist protested that she or he wasn’t talking about Jews… in each case, the Jewish interlocutor insisted that they could equally apply the logic applied to gays and women to Jews, could they not? Finally, the conservative activists caved. In the words of the aptly named Pastor Riggle, “No. No, I’m not saying… yes, I’m saying that, but that isn’t the issue that we’re talking about”.
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In Hobby Lobby, the court decided that closely held corporations are “persons” for the purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This means that corporations, like human beings, may have religious beliefs that the government must respect. To many of us, this seems patently absurd. As a lower court wrote, corporations “do not pray, worship, observe sacraments, or take other religiously motivated actions”. Yet, Justice Alito proceeded along highly Talmudic… even Pharisaic… lines. He noted that corporations are “persons” in other laws, like the Dictionary Act. He called a corporation “simply a form of organisation used by human beings to achieve desired ends”. He observed that religious non-profit organisations are already granted religious exemptions… so, why not for-profit businesses?
I can see where this is going. Hobby Lobby’s owners are extremist “Evangelicals”… the next thing is that they’ll demand an abstinence declaration from their employees based on “religious liberty”. The “Evangelicals” are in no way Traditional Christians, they have little (if anything) in common with us, and this case points that up. Look at what the Church teaches… V A Chaplin reiterated it here… and look at what the Hobby Lobby pukes demand. There’s nothing that we hold in common with these godless and god-denying sectarians (they deny the sacraments, the liturgy, the whole canon of Holy Scripture, the priesthood, and Tserkovnost, after all). This legal case is just another illustration of that. Single-payer is the way to go, as Vermont showed with Dr Dynasaur. All the parents in Vermont love it. These Affluent Effluent greedsters simply wish to treat their employees like marionettes, and we shouldn’t allow them to do that. Their so-called “Religious Liberty” is a licence for religious persecution… I’ll say that loud n’ proud. I’m on the other side of the barricades from the theomachistic “Evangelicals” and I’m handin’ out the AKs, RPGs, flamethrowers, coshes, and axe handles out back… hey, we lefties know how to use ‘em too. Have a care… there be evil people out there… and most of ‘em dress up in “religious vesture”… the ones with the biggest smiles are the biggest assholes. Keep your wits about you…
BMD
Voices from Russia 
24 March 2016. No Religious Organisation Has the Right to Ram Its Religious Beliefs Down Another’s Throat with the State’s Connivance
Tags: Christian, Christianity, Health care, healthcare, healthcare plan, political commentary, politics, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, Roman Catholic, single payer healthcare, Single-payer health care, United States, USA
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I saw this comment on RT on a story about a bunch of nuns seeking exemption from offering contraceptive coverage for their secular employees:
I quite agree. If these nuns employ secular employees, they have no right to dictate their private behaviour or their religious practise, let alone to do so with the state’s connivance. Modern states are secular in character… that is, they have no “Church by Law Established”, therefore, the state is neutral in religious matters. The state can allow no religious body or person to evade laws binding on all citizens by citing “religious belief”. For instance, Quakers must pay income tax, even though much of that money goes for war purposes, which is against deeply held Quaker beliefs. The same is true of other Traditional Peace Churches. These bodies have shouldered their burden as conscientious citizens… in return, the state does its best to accommodate their pacifist tenets. During times of conscription, the state has either allowed men of these groups to serve in noncombatant roles (mostly as medical orderlies, where many won deserved recognition for bravery at the front) or to carry out essential civilian duties (such as firefighters in national forests or as assistants in civilian hospitals). These people are worthy of the respect of all decent people… they shoulder their common civic burden and shirk nothing onerous and hard. These nuns are punks. “We want a religious exemption! We won’t offer contraceptive services to our employees”. This coverage is state-mandated… that ends the discussion. If the Peace Churches can accommodate the military needs of the state, these nuns can accommodate the state’s mandate that they offer full healthcare coverage to their employees. Actually, as a socialist, I think that we need a state-funded single-payer system (most hospitals and doctors prefer such a system over the present chaotic non-system)… since the nuns wouldn’t be offering healthcare coverage, it wouldn’t “burden” their conscience. The sooner that we have single-payer, like the rest of the civilised world, the better off we all shall be.
BMD