June 9, 2014

What Hobby Lobby Can Mean for the LGBT Community

Posted: 03-25-2014
Updated: 05/25/2014

HOBBY LOBBY BIRTH CONTROL

Today, March 25, 2014, the Supreme Court will hear argument in yet another case that could dramatically affect LGBT people, but this time it's not about marriage equality. In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a for-profit business is challenging its obligation under the Affordable Care Act to provide employees with access to birth control. If accepted by the Court, the arguments Hobby Lobby is advancing may pose a serious threat to anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people...

Understandably, this case is receiving significant attention in the reproductive rights movement. However, the LGBT community should be equally invested in the outcome given the considerable intersections between these movements. The LGBT and reproductive rights movements have a shared legal past and continue to be linked in legal discourse. Many of the initial LGBT legal successes built on the legal successes of the reproductive rights movement. Both movements are strongly based on the principle that individuals have a constitutionally protected right to control their sexual lives without interference by the government. The same arguments used to attack reproductive freedom are often used to undermine protections against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. And even more fundamentally, access to safe and affordable abortions and contraception are critically important to lesbian and bisexual women and to transgender people. Because of these tangible intersections, the Hobby Lobby case has the potential to harm the LGBT community in a number of significant ways.

Perhaps most obviously, a Supreme Court decision allowing employers to restrict employee contraceptive coverage would directly harm many queer women and families. Many members of our community engage in sexual activity that can lead to unintended pregnancy and are also, tragically, sometimes targeted for sexual assault and rape, which can result in unwanted pregnancy. Some studies even suggest that LGBT youth are at a higher risk for teen pregnancy than their heterosexual counterparts. These segments of our community urgently need the access to contraceptive coverage that the ACA requires.

But the Hobby Lobby case threatens LGBT people's reproductive rights in other, perhaps less obvious ways. LGBT people already face disproportionate discrimination in accessing health care services, including denials for treatment. This is especially true for reproductive health care and access to reproductive health technologies. These barriers almost certainly would be exacerbated if employers are able to pick and choose which services are covered based on discriminatory factors. For example, citing religious objections, employers could refuse to cover reproductive health care for transgender individuals or fertility services for same-sex couples.

A negative outcome in the case could also roll back crucial victories for LGBT equality at the state and local level. While federal laws expressly prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people in employment, housing, and public accommodations have yet to be enacted, several states and localities have enacted such measures. However, because those laws exempt religious organizations, a Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby could open the door for businesses to argue that they must be given similar leeway to violate state and local anti-discrimination laws...

More at the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ashland-johnson/what-hobby-lobby-can-mean-for-the-lgbt-community_b_5028592.html

Won't be decided until late this momth, according to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebelius_v._Hobby_Lobby#Opinion_of_the_Court

More effects from the political activism of Hobby Lobby:

What The Christian Right Hopes To Gain From the Hobby Lobby Case

http://purpleunions.com/blog/tag/hobby-lobby

Why gay rights groups care about a Supreme Court birth control case

http://news.yahoo.com/why-gay-rights-groups-care-about-a-supreme-court-birth-control-case-211337519.html

Why LGBT Groups Should Be Paying Attention to the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Cases

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/03/21/lgbt-groups-paying-attention-hobby-lobby-conestoga-wood-cases/

Arizona’s Anti-Gay Bill Lives on in Hobby Lobby

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/03/arizonas-anti-gay-bill-lives-on-in-hobby-lobby.html

And this tidbit:

Hobby Lobby slammed over alleged anti-Semitism

http://www.wisconsingazette.com/breaking-news/hobby-lobby-slammed-over-alleged-anti-semitism.html

MOST IMPORTANT IS THIS from Salon:

Hobby Lobby’s secret agenda: How it’s quietly funding a vast right-wing movement
Exclusive: How entities related to the company are quietly pumping tens of millions into a mélange of fringe causes

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/27/hobby_lobbys_secret_agenda_how_its_secretly_funding_a_vast_right_wing_movement/

This is not representative of the people of Seattle and will set this region back. There is a lot of money being funneled here to fight liberal and progressive causes here and they've taken over most media as well.

June 8, 2014

It's also the definition of a hate group according to a former American Nazi referring to MRA's.

Because rather than uplifting men and giving them solutions to better their situation, they focus on controlling women in the most extreme manner, as if that is going to empower them.

It does not really do so, leaving them to be more discontented and get more radical in thier focus, no more than Fox and the other conservative media empower their listeners or viewers in the case of radio pundits.

Blaming a group, deflecting the effect of one's own actions in making one unhappy, or in this case, endlessly demonizing, is irresponsible and it serves to allow an unjust status quo to go unchallenged instead.

I think the GOP or some of its branches should be designated a hate group for their attacks on gays women, minorities, immigrants, the poor, elderly and disabled as well as the working people of America.

Just sayin'

Sorry, that is a horrendous run-on sentence, but I have to do some other things. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

June 8, 2014

Going through the article and links, I love this. It has something for everyone to feel good about.

We're all in this together. Now it's time to act like it. Thanks for posting this piece.

June 8, 2014

Their voting block has the attention span of a gnat and stays receptive to their commercials.

"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

Andrew H. Card, Jr.
White House Chief of Staff
New York Times - September 7, 2002

President George W Bush had a serious problem. In 2002, he was trying to sell the American people a war against Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein. But despite a wide selection of rationales offered to justify the thing, very few people were buying. When none of his advertising slogans seemed to be working, Bush had no choice but to employ a little old-fashioned puffery.

So the President and his lackeys tweaked the message. They started promoting the idea that Saddam currently possessed significant weapons of mass destruction, poised to strike the United States and Britain. That certainly got people's attention. In fact, it scared the shit out of them. Public opinion quickly swayed in favor of military intervention, and the rest is history.

Since the war, however, millions of Americans have concluded that they are victims of false advertising. None of the fabled WMDs has actually shown up, despite months of intensive searching. Understandably, people feel they were lied to.

Much more of the sales campaign at the link, but the hosting website is really bad:

http://www.rotten.com/library/history/war/wmd/saddam/

The GOP sold the war using WMD with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein as the bogeymen. They sold the need to continue in Afghanistan and Iraq when Obama was working to get elected in 2008. They continued with the Israeli security issue, sanctioning Egypt and all the countries the Arab Spring were happening in.

They sold the need for bombing Libya after Benghazi, the need to put boots on the ground in Syria to protect us from Al Queda. Their friends in CT-land have sold another version for them, to fight Obama.

They sold the Bergdahl POW story first to get votes and blame Obama. They've sold birther, oath of office disclaimers to this man being in the White House.

Then after all the lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan ostensibly going after Bin Laden, when Obama got him, it didn't matter anymore. But then Bush said the same once the war was in full swing, but he'd been a great marketing tool.

They protested ending the wars in the middle east on one side of their mouth then said he kept it going too long. They denied funding for embassy security, then sold their alternative reality on Benghazi. They've sold the veterans of their wars out time and again in appropriations, with the rest of Americans.

They are nothing but one big disgusting con job. And they've got a lot of people on all sides convinced to buy it. We see it every single day, as they control virtually all venues of media.

What could go wrong for them?

Only people hearing the facts who still have a sense of fair play and decency stand against their lies and con jobs. Only Americans who have not jumped in the cesspool with them and enjoyed it.

Will those who don't buy it go out to vote?

Because their target audience will. This year is crucial to what world we want to live in.

June 8, 2014

Everyone knew that wasn't about all white men. If the shoe doesn't fit, why insist on wearing it?

Moore was not writing about himself but criticizing a segment of society that refuses to give others equal chances in this world. When Franken published this:



He wasn't talking about heavy people. And Moore is well known as a heavy person, too:



Both books are really about heartlessness, not heavy-ness, white-ness, or male-ness. And they were written by white men calling out their alleged kin.

Haven't writers such as Moore used the same designation and not been accused of racism or sexism but been acclaimed as speaking truth to power and calling out conservatives?

Why is it so uncomfortable to listen to others who are not white males, who want to join into the same conversation on reactionaries?

Why are they not respected as allies, as they seek to express their oppression, to teach those who say they're against oppression?

Some seek to find an offense any criticism of what they consider their exterior qualities, when it's not about that at all. It's like identifying with a team. Just as I am of a certain physical type in race and gender, but not heart and mindset to this person:



There are critical differences between this person and myself, though some would say she might be my 'kin.' I barely regard her as a member of homo sapiens in good standing, we're so far apart:

First, I wouldn't dress with a cheesy patriotic fabric. Teabaggers think they're making a political statement and looking patriotic. Bullshit, there's nothing patriotic about hate.

Second, I never, make such a hateful, hostile face, particularly with that open mouthed yelling. Just imagine the coarseness you'd expect to issue out of that mouth. Hate is not interesting, nor is any help, and that is a hate group.

Third, I can spell and don't wave around signs. Might as well have a Fox News icon tatooed on their foreheads. They hav no original thoughts, just stupid, repeated slogans.

Fourth, I am aware of the issue of making all people talk and act and look the same, and don't approve. We don't have a national language because it isn't needed. The language of most of business, science and other enterprises at this time on Planet Earth is English. It's not endangered. Quit the hysteria.

Fifth, I have better uses of my time than to prate about things that mean nothing. These are simply th arguments of egotism. The baggers have the luxury of first amendent rights and the right to protest in public but this is what they do with their rights, hate on others instead of anything positive.

So I'm not offended. Why should others be?

I'm also older than some who post here. I feel more fortunate than the current generation, having lived through the sixties and seventies and seeing and hearing JFK, MLK, RFK and others as they changed the world for me and others. I lived in a time of brave and noble people, not the grifters I see today running amuck and trying to destroy the lives of so many who never did them any harm.

I grew up in a time when unions and workers and doing the right thing by others in general but certainly not all was a given, not subjct to debate, nor was protecting the environment or personal freedoms an issue.

It was the right thing to do. A lot was done in that era, that's since been lost in a tsunami of right wing propaganda working to erase every good idea ever fought and died for to create peace within us.

Those ideals are the shared legacy of my generation of Democrats, not other parties. I'm here to remind those who have not lived in those days, there's a better way to live than what Reagan era spin tells us there is, better than the reality the Koch's are determined to force on us and the generations to come.

So I am and have been blessed, despite hardships and things I do not bring here, never internalizing criticisms of the worst of all, as some do. I don't understand why they would identify with the worst human specimens, because that's who is being called out, and not them, and if they valued what is right, there'd be no fighting.

JMHO.

June 8, 2014

Sorry, but Jason is wrong. Remember the shameless bunch we're dealing with.

Some Americans will see the horror of the GOP for what it is, but not their voting block. Media continues to inflame their benighted base to get out in vote in the mid-terms. And they are always 'likely voters.' Decent people may reject it, but not their followers.

June 8, 2014

People are noticing now, Cali Democrat:

A comment...

Deborah Weiss

Bergdahl showed all the symptoms of having an actual, living conscience, poor kid--a fatal flaw in the cartoon version of America we're obliged to inhabit nowadays. Certainly, his devout Presbyterian father has behaved the way one would expect a Christian of the Calvinist persuasion to behave (I used to teach adult Sunday School at a Presbyterian church in rural Illinois, so believe me, I know Presbyterians): attempting to act with integrity, kindness, self-effacement and decency, living the imitation of Christ which is the challenge Christian souls are supposed to at least try to meet.

Which leads to this observation: one of the ways in which we can confirm that Republicans don't actually believe in God is that after lynching this boy, none of them has publicly resigned from office, weeping and contrite and praying for mercy from the Almighty. None of them has given up his riches and gone to work in a soup kitchen in the desperate hope that there's still time for redemption after what he's done to the Bergdahl family. None of them is gazing in terror at the clear summer sky, anticipating the thunderbolt that a wrathful Christian God might reasonably decide to wield.

On the contrary: they're all clearly enjoying the hell out of this soul murder, which has played out just the way their operatives (those experts at working the refs and rolling the press) said it would. Moreover, they're all doubling down, including--or perhaps especially--the vile McCain, who has now issued a deranged statement accusing some members of the press (not his friends, mind you, but some of the outliers, like Tapper) of lying by reporting things he said in the past that aren't the same as the things he's saying now.

These awful, hateful, horrid men destroyed the kid and his family without so much as a twitch of Christian conscience. And what makes it worst is they did it all for a mind-blowingly trivial reason: to deprive the president of what would have been a pretty nice photo-op in an election year.

That's all. That's it. That's what was worth taking this boy and his mother and father and flaying them in public, humiliating them, exposing them to death threats and to the monstrous raw id (with its insatiable capacity for scalding rage) that is the Republican base. It's an election year, and that Rose Garden photo op might have played well in the boonies. It might even have been good for a fraction of a point or two in the polls. And so they unleashed their hate machine and ruined the kid's life.

It's beyond anything. I've rarely been so disgusted. I'll certainly remember it from now on, whenever I see one of these so-and-so's putting on that pious jowly Republican holy face and Gawd-blessing America.

I don't know if that is a real person's name, but it's a comment from a piece by Esquire's Charles Pierce.

to DUer DonViego:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5065070

June 8, 2014

'Death threats are free speech to these animals.' And have been for years. It's all they got.

A few conservatives kindly pointed out that the entry about the Republican Clown College was not fair and balanced. So, in the interest of fairness and balance, here's a little light hearted conservative-made humor poking fun at liberals -- a "Liberal Hunting Permit."

No Bag Limit - Tagging Not Required. May be used while under the influence of alcohol. May be used to Hunt Liberals at Gay Pride Parades, Democrat Conventions, Union Rallys, Handgun Control Meetings, News Media Association, Lesbian Luncheons, and Hollywood Functions. MAY HUNT DAY OR NIGHT WITH OR WITHOUT DOGS

http://boingboing.net/2009/05/05/liberal-hunting-perm.html

Having seen these on bumpers for over twenty years in several states, the joke is a bit stale with me.

June 8, 2014

Yes, we see you, GOP.

Thanks, DonViejo, for bringing this here.

June 8, 2014

Have a good night, She she! And thanks for all the support!