What I find interesting is the use of corporations out of both sides of some people’s mouths.
People against the law and against Hobby Lobby say that corporations have beliefs, so corporations cannot have a religious belief exemption. OK. That is a stand. But they applaud when a company like Apple and others express a belief, which favors them. Seems rather duplicitous to me.
But even more interesting is Apple (which products I own too many of, happily) coming out against Indiana, but it is looking to open stores in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere where gay people get jailed, stoned, and killed outright for being gay. Hum…not a peep about those countries or a boycott of them.
At least, I am consistent. My company does business IN, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to name a few. And I am not out there speaking and trying to boycott IN, while accepting money and developing relationships with countries that have active anti-gay measures codified in government law. I always find people with dueling positions who simultaneously act self-righteous on one position, but not the other, rather intriguing.
Hobby Lobby says they don’t have to obey the law because of their religious beliefs. What law does Apple say they don’t have to obey? Oh yeah, there isn’t one.
. Cardinal Fang: Regarding your point #3 on sincerely held religious beliefs. This bothers me also. Why should oe person be allowed to eat peyote buttons and another person be jailed for it? Why should one person be allowed to possess eagle feathers and another be fined for it?. Or one group be exempted from Social Security, ACA (the Amish) and everyone else has to comply? It seems to be a direct collision of freedom of religion versus equal application of the laws.
People against the law and against Hobby Lobby say that corporations have beliefs, so corporations cannot have a religious belief exemption. OK. That is a stand. But they applaud when a company like Apple and others express a belief, which favors them. "
I’m trying to understand your view, but I have to admit I’m not quite understanding this. Could I ask you to clarify? Thanks.
This is rampant in California still and a few other states. I am currently handling two cases for the retail company for which I work. The plaintiffs roll down the street in wheelchairs and visit every retailer and find all the violations which range from the toilet paper holder being a half inch too high, the grab bars being the wrong shape or the parking space having a slight slope. Frankly (and speaking as a child of a parent who was wheelchair bound), I would consider not inviting disabled shoppers into our stores due to this issue. (I’m slightly serious…)
I really am conflicted about these laws and how they are going to be enforced. I do believe a business has a right to make some judgment calls regarding who it wants to serve, but I also oppose unwarranted discriminatory impact. I write letters every day in my job “uninviting” customers from our stores. At some point is there going to be a protected class known as “A-h*les”?
One of the arguments in the Hobby Lobby case was the corporation is not a person, thus has no “beliefs,” and therefore was not entitled to the religious belief exemption. The big selling point was corporations are not people and do not believe anything.
I understood that argument, even though I disagree with it. And I use myself as the example - my corporation does not do anything without my stamp of approval, i.e., my belief system running the show or the aggregate belief system of the board running the show.
However, now that some corporations, such as Apple, have come out and said they are against this IN law, all of a sudden, corporations can have beliefs and take a stand. As I suspected in Hobby Lobby case, the corporation can have no beliefs argument only applies to a corporation, which does not believe what certain people want the corporation to promote.
If I were emperor, I’d get rid of all of those exemptions. But I admit, I dislike some of them more than others. Amish people who are self-employed don’t have to pay Social Security taxes, but they also don’t collect Social Security, and if they are employed by non-Amish businesses, then they do have to pay Social Security. So this doesn’t cause non-Amish people any trouble.
A few Indians getting to have eagle feathers doesn’t seem so bad, either. It doesn’t cause me much grief; either way, I can’t have eagle feathers and eagles are protected.
Same with the guy whose religion demands that he have a beard, being allowed to have a beard in prison when others can’t. Not much of an imposition on anyone else.
But Acme Florist not having to make wedding bouquets for two brides seems worse, in my view. Letting the religious prisoner have a beard doesn’t make anyone else worse off, but letting Acme not sell flowers to lesbians makes the lesbians worse off.
Actually, Hobby Lobby did obey the law; it just said that specifically four (I believe that was the number) procedures were not allowed under its religious exemption - however, a dozen or so other producers that did the same thing were allowed.
EDIT: And to be even more accurate, Hobby Lobby did not stop anyone from getting any procedure. What it said was it would not pay for those four procedures, as paying would make it complicit in the act of taking a life, which is against its religious beliefs.
Because different religious beliefs are respected, per the First Amendment.
As for those four procedures mentioned above, if someone believes that an action is the direct taking of a life, then he has every right not to obey that law.
I’ve taken classes where they had the participants try to navigate the building in a wheelchair - it really opens your eyes. OTOH. I’m not sure why a coffee shop of less than 800 square feet needs to have two handicap accessible bathrooms. It seems to me we ought to be able to use the existing non HC toilet and add an HC toilet, make them both unisex and call it a day. The rules change constantly too, so a bathroom could have been ADA legal when it was built (and therefore still legal), but the owners will have to fight the lawsuit anyway.
Except Cardinal Fang, one person might be fined or jailed for having peyote or an eagle feather, while the other one isn’t even prosecuted. So it is a big imposition. I don’t like double standards.
One person can demand that his employer give him Saturdays off because that’s his religous day and the employer usually must accomodate him. The person who wants Saturdays off because that’s the day his team plays softball does not have to be accomodated.
Had this issue with a pool that we renovated for a neighborhood as charity.
There were no handicap children or people in the entire area - none. Yet, government said no pool if $125K was not spent on a accessible ramp to lower in the water etc. alone with all the yearly maintenance. That is just silly. I set my lawyers on that one and they won and the neighborhood got its pool.
However, I do know a pool that got closed down because of a new ramp law. The the ramp alone would cost than the entire operating annual budget of the pool, some $90K. Gees, of course, it could not be afforded. So instead of 300 kids having a pool for the summer, no one got a pool. Yeah, real brilliant.
Government bureaucrats at work. I do feel sorry for the poor that actually have to live under these silly laws. Rich people can easily escape that government nonsense.
That is the problem with all these protected classes nonsense. It is people calling for equality to do unequal things. Have to love the logic, if you can find it in there somewhere.
It must be difficult to ask of consistency, as no one seems to expect this of Apple, but expect it of IN. And Apple, can bad mouth Indiana.
Apple does business and sells products in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, and Nigeria - all which actually execute homosexuals for being homosexuals. Apple makes money off of these countries, yet Indiana must be boycotted.
Gotta love the duplicity, and those who follow this line of thinking, “States bad for wanting religious freedom and must not be given business. But countries that actually kill homosexuals for the sake of being homosexual are good enough to have our business.”
For the record, I own Apple stock, love the stock, and not planing on getting rid of it. I just find it absolutely hilarious this double-standad it portrays on this issue.
“Case-in-point: Chick FiL-A franchises. Never seen any signs or anything otherwise there.”
Chick FIL-A’s owners announced to the world what they think about gay marriage. No need for them to put up any signs. And even though that is the owner’s personal belief, I am 100% certain Chick FIL-A does not refuse to sell gay people chicken sandwiches and fries
One other intended aspect of the Indiana law that hasn’t been mentioned here is to enable businesses to discriminate against trans people who supposedly use the “wrong” bathroom, even in municipalities (such as Indianapolis, Bloomington, Evansville, etc.) with laws prohibiting discrimination not only on grounds of sexual orientation, but on grounds of gender identity or expression. See http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/25/politics/mike-pence-religious-freedom-bill-gay-rights/, quoting Eric Miller, one of the law’s leading proponents and “a powerful lobbyist on socially conservative issues in Indiana, who stood behind Pence at Thursday’s bill signing ceremony,” as saying that “Christian businesses won’t be punished for ‘refusing to allow a man to use the women’s restroom.’” Since people like that believe that anyone assigned male at birth is a “man,” always and forever, the goal is to allow the exclusion of trans women from using women’s restrooms. In essence, the same purpose as the bills which have recently been introduced in a number of states that would directly criminalize the use of public bathrooms by trans people, other than the one corresponding to the sex shown on their birth certificate. (Unless business owners are going to start asking people for birth certificates or conducting underwear inspections – hardly a foolproof test in either case – the impact, of course, will primarily be on those who are “visibly trans.” Just like the impact of anti-gay discrimination in providing services would be primarily on the “visibly gay.”)
Here’s the editorial and front-page image from the Indianapolis Star appealing to vox populi. I hope you can view the image of the front page of the paper.