My God is Better than Your God, or What the Hobby Lobby Ruling Could Mean For You

Today the Supreme Court decided that Hobby Lobby doesn't have to provide birth control to its employees, despite federal laws that dictate otherwise.

Hobby Lobby claimed that provided contraception violated their religious beliefs. Now, religious institutions... churches, non profits... they were already exempt from these federal laws. But Hobby Lobby is a for-profit corporation. Legally, as Mitt Romney reminded us, a person.

To give you an idea of why this is such a terrible precedent, I present myself. The married mother of three. The accomplished crafter. The SAIC educated artist. The DIYer. I am exactly who Hobby Lobby wants shopping at their store. And I am also who they want to work for them.

Most of the people behind the anti-abortion movement consider themselves religious. And the anti-abortion movement and the anti-contraception movement are closely linked. It seems like madness, but it's true. Because in both of these cases, the philosophical center of the debate is women, daring to have sex for pleasure. If they get pregnant and need an abortion, they're evil, selfish, sinning harlots. If they don't get pregnant because they successfully use contraception, they're evil, selfish, sinning harlots.

That's the common ground. That's where it starts.

Now Hobby Lobby, who claims deep religious beliefs, says it's an infringement on their freedom of religion to support those evil, selfish, sinning harlots if it provides them with a third party insurance plan that includes birth control*.

The fact is that about 99% of women in the US have used contraceptives. Married women are among the most reliable users of the pill*. Working women rely on contraceptives.

And NOT just to keep from getting pregnant.

Birth control regulates periods, letting you control what day it begins, how long it lasts, or even if you have one at all. And with all the side effects of menstruation (cramps, headaches, insomnia, etc.), being in control of when or if these symptoms occur INCREASES your productivity at work.

So if I worked at Hobby Lobby, they would have the right to ensure that I am minimally productive for at least one week out of each month.

Hobby Lobby, which says its deep religious beliefs are behind this legal action, wants to make sure women follow its Christian values. But I don't have Christian values. In fact, as a Jew, it is essentially to me that I take contraception.

The most important law in all of Judaism is to do what you must "in order to preserve life." You can eat any non-kosher food, break the Sabbath, anything- IF it preserves life.

If I get pregnant, I get melanoma. If I get pregnant, I get cancer and a uterus ready to explode. If I get pregnant, I run extremely high odds of death. For me, contraceptives preserve life.

Now that Hobby Lobby has the right to deny me my legal protections because of their religion, I might be fired for taking off my Jewish holidays. Or if I skipped shul and went to work on Yom Kippur, I could be fired for refusing to take my lunch break, what with my fasting and all.

Now Hobby Lobby has opened a door that MUST be closed, to the elevation of one religion over another.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Hobby Lobby has the right to ignore federal laws under the guise of religious persecution, it's open season on non-Christians in the workplace.

Because as much as these right-wing conservative blowhards claim there is a war against Christians in this country, it's a lie. What's happening is that our country, founded with the understanding that there must be no state instituted religion, founded by men of faith but not CHRISTIAN faith, by theists and deists and Quakers, has reached a point where the "other" religions are visible. Where once in a while, a Christian might assume that everyone around them is also Christian and be wrong.

Jews, Hindus, native peoples, Sikhs, and horror of horrors, Muslims are all around us. Living in peace, administering to their faith in peace, and generally going about their lives.

This so-called War on Christians, it's the realization that Christians don't have the absolute majority anymore. That there is enough of a voice of "others" out there that when a statue of Jesus or the Ten Commandments appears on a state house, somebody is going to complain. Not just to whine for the sake of whining, but because this great country was founded on something important.

"All men."

Not Christian men. Not white men. And not even all male "men." All people. They all have the right to their religious beliefs or to none at all. And no company is above that.

At least, not until today.

It's a dark day in American History. A day when all the non-Christians stood slack jawed and shocked, amazed that now their employer could dictate their lives beyond work, based on some idea that their moral authority is better, that their faith is more important, that their God is better than your God. Or even that their personal idea of God is somehow superior to another person's.

I'll leave you with this, rather than my own furious ramblings.

“I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.”
~Thomas Jefferson


“We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition… In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws...”
~George Washington




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*Yes, I know the ruling specifically covers a subset of contraceptive methods. And despite what you may have heard, these methods (IUD, morning after pill) are NOT abortifacients. This still sets a tremendously dangerous precedent. The precedent that YOUR BOSS gets to decide what medication is or is not covered by your plan, based only on your boss's own perceived religiously moral superiority. If YOUR BOSS says that blood transfusions are against his religion, or that mammograms are against his religion, should he have the power to remove those options from your third party insurance? I think not. And I am not alone.

Taking a Tour on the Blogosphere Bus

I met the fabulous Lisa Petty, of Petty Thoughts, at Blog U, dancing like a maniac. Or maybe it was me dancing like a maniac. At any rate, she's fantastic. And she invited me to be part of an ongoing blog tour! I've had a ton of fun at every stop, getting to know different bloggers and their writing styles and processes. It's a been a helluva digital vacation! And now the planes, trains, and automobiles have brought us here- to my stop. So while you take in the lovely Chicago scenery, maybe visit the Field Museum and eat a veggie dog on the back steps, I'll tell you all about what I do.



What Am I Working On?
I'm still fiddling with my memoir (excerpt here), and increasingly desperately trying to get a literary agent. The fact is, selling a memoir is hard, unless you're a celebrity. And sadly, having a few enormously viral blog posts does not a celebrity make. Aside from that, I'm writing here, on the blog, and I'm working on a super secret project I can't talk about right now, but that will no doubt make me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams.

How Does My Work Differ From Others Of Its Genre?
The memoir? It differs from others of its genres by somewhat defying genres. It's a story of the many ways our brains can try to destroy themselves, with tumors or poisons or chemical imbalances. But more, it's a true story about the power of love bold enough to stand defiant in the face of death. It's a love story, and an offer of comfort to anyone suffering from mental illness who ignores their own pain as immaterial or unreal. It's about surviving a death sentence, and collapsing under the weight of freedom. I'm not sure I've ever read a memoir with those particular themes.


Why Do I Write/Create What I Do?
I can't not write. I moved to Chicago for art school twelve years ago. And when the dean of the Art Institute welcomed us to the school, he said most of us would never work making art. Very nearly none. "So if you can do anything else, do that," he said. And it stuck with me, because I could. I dropped out of the Art Institute because I knew I could do something else. But there is one thing I can't stop doing. Since I wrote my first poem at age five, I cannot stop writing. Haiku, novellas, short stories, slam poems, fiction, and nonfiction... whatever is happening in my life, I am compelled to continue writing. Lucky me, the blogosphere is welcoming to folks with my particular writing handicap- namely, an addiction to an audience.

How Does Your Writing Process Work?
I'm a follower of Earnest Hemingway's methodology. "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." I sit down to write, and I write until it's done. I ignore my children, I don't eat, I don't get up to use the bathroom. I just sit and write and write and write. Sometimes, I get an idea for a post or a chapter or a poem when I'm not at my computer. I turn it over in my head a while, coming up with phrases I like, examining the sides of the issue, or my perspectives on it, and then when I sit down to write I jump around a bit, make sure I hit all the salient points. But for the most part, I just sit and write.


...and that was the Becoming SuperMommy stop on the Blogosphere Express!



Let me introduce you to your next stops!

Celeste McLean is the writer behind the widely unread blog Running Nekkid, where she writes about grief, mental health, and her Pacific Islander ancestry. She left her tropical paradise island home twenty years ago and has been trying to figure out how to go back ever since. She currently lives in Seattle with her husband where they raise two children and tolerate one very demanding cat.

Get a feel for her by reading a few posts before you get to her station. Big Hair No Pants is a heartbreaking and beautiful tribute to her father. Then read For Ian, a Memory, which is an equally beautiful love letter written back before her husband was her husband. They are utterly marvelous posts, and your day will be inexpressibly richer for having read them.

Tamara Woods was raised (fairly happily) in West Virginia, where she began writing poetry at the age of 12. Her first poetry collection is available at Sakura Publishing and Amazon. She has previous experience as a newspaper journalist, an event organizer, volunteer with AmeriCorps and VISTA, in addition to work with people with disabilities. She has used her writing background to capture emotions and moments in time for anthologies such as Empirical Magazine, her blog PenPaperPad, as a contributing writer for the online ‘zine Lefty Pop, and writing articles as a full-time freelance writer. She is a hillbilly hermit in Honolulu living with her Mathmagician.

Get acquainted with her by reading her dystopian fiction, and watch her read a poem from her book- Hot Comb Self-Deception. It's wonderful.

Melanie is a recovering nerd who has always considered herself a writer, but barely considers herself at all anymore because three kids. She is mom to Moo, Slim and The Geel and is proud to say that so far the kids have fared much better in her house than the houseplants have. The NotsoSuper blog was born out of frustration and the not-so-thrilled feeling she got when she found out she was pregnant with The Geel.

She calls herself the NotsoSuperMom because she does not want to give anyone the false impression that she is trying to "do it all." She's not even trying to do it right. She'd just like to get something--ANYTHING--done. She writes to escape the laundry and to pretend that someone is listening to her. She was recently featured on In The Powder Room and you can find her on facebook and the twitter.

Get to know her delightfully self-depreciating humor in her post, Annie Get Your Gun (or the Night I Almost Shot My Yoga Pants). Then read her beautifully vulnerably post about the day she lost her first grader, Little Moo Lost.

Karyn is a lapsed social worker, work-at-home mom, and one-quarter of Team Pickles. Along with Ben (the thinker), Molly (the doer), and Ian (the Brit), she battles for truth, justice, and the Canadian way in a world where parenting and puns go hand-in-hand. Follow their adventures at PicklesINK and get short bursts of funny on Facebook and Twitter.

To give you an idea of why I'm crazy about Karyn (and it's not just her rock awesome moves to the Spice Girls), start out with her brilliant post- Are You Elsa or Anna? What Frozen Says About Depression. It's beyond insightful. Then for some more parenting depth and conversation on kindness, check out A Passion for Compassion.