God's hobby

Yeah, alright, you knew I’d have some questions about the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision. The majority ruling said it has limited application, but as near as I can tell, it’s actually opening such a sack of snakes that it’s going to keep several thousand law firms in Testonis for decades.

Not to mention filling campaign coffers for Congressmorons of every political stripe.

Because first of all, the decision (as written by Justice Samuel Alito) speaks of “closely-held corporations” as essentially humanoid and being entitled to run their business on the values of their closely-held owners, including claiming exception to Federal law by reason of closely-held religious conviction.

But you know—they’re talking about Christian religious convictions, because the Hobby Lobby owners were objecting to providing insurance coverage for several types of contraception that they believe (and it is belief, because scientific definitions pretty much refute their notions) these devices and medications are abortifacients. And they oppose abortions.

Well, maybe that’s indeed a limited application, because outside some parts of Pakistan and Africa where Islamist extremists have been murdering medical teams trying to vaccinate people against polio, it really has been only Christians who seem to object to 21^st Century health practices. Actually, they’re objecting to 20^th Century health practices.

(Although I imagine there are many aspects of sharia law that appeal to our Baptist Taliban, so there may be some accommodation down the road.)

I’m kind of spitballing here, that the Hobby Lobby crowd are getting their guidance in these matters directly from the Almighty, Who has somewhere decreed that these forms of contraception are somehow in violation of…well, the will of God.

So I therefore find it really interesting that Hobby Lobby (and therefore presumably God) is totally down with vasectomies. Oh—and Viagra.

Well, what’s up (um) with that? Because I’d have thought that erectile dysfunction was pretty much God’s way of telling you your shagging days are over. And therefore taking anything for it is interfering in God’s will. Big time.

(I worry that the God of Hobby Lobby seems overly concerned with a voyeur's view of women's sexual activities. Like some omnipresent-but-not-omniscient omnipotent-yet-impotent Hugh Hefner. Am I the only person creeped out by that?)

Or what about antibiotics? They screw with biological destiny, don’t they? They kill off little lives in their millions; how come they’re okay? Oh, only human life in its most rudimentary cellular form is of concern? Okay.

Well, what if you’re prescribed antibiotics because you have some kind of sexually-transmitted disease? Seems to me that curing the clap ought to be a clear no-no, because good Christians, engaging in “legitimate” sex (c.f., Todd Akin, R-Mo., and “legitimate rape”) surely would not be visited with an STD, right? So any kind of, you know, condition of questionable provenance is going to be on the non-coverage list.

And how long after that comes stoning adulterous women, honor killings and bride burnings? Because those are all deeply-held religious values also.