Exactly. David Ropeik writes today July 5 at Psychology Today that the theocratic Supremes can’t be trusted, because they’re dishonest. Yes they are.
…more and more, trust in the most important part of that system, one of the basic foundations on which this great nation rests, is being eroded. The U.S. Supreme Court is supposed to be the final neutral arbiter of what is and what is not legal, but more and more the 5 person conservative majority on the court is undermining trust in the nation’s highest court, and ultimately the very fairness of how America works, by appearing to decide cases based on their personal ideology rather than an objective consideration of the law.
Just Thursday, and to little notice compared to the high profile ruling earlier in the week in the Hobby Lobby case, the court seemed to say that non-profit institutions have the right to impose their religious views on their employees, specifically in this case Christian opposition to contraception and abortion. (Read the ruling itself here.) There is one big and SCARY difference between this ruling and Hobby Lobby, and it raises serious questions about whether the conservative majority is honestly following the law, or dishonestly finding ways to impose their personal ideology on how America works.
Yes, and that’s not even all. They lied in the Hobby Lobby ruling itself, saying it was a narrow ruling and then the next day throwing it wide open.
This is far more corrosive to trust in the Supreme Court than the fight over contraception, or abortion, or whether you are a conservative or a liberal and like or dislike any of the Court’s specific decisions. This is about the honesty of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, and therefore trust in this important institution. The court used one line of thinking in one ruling, and then tossed it out in the next, allowing the majority to move toward more conservative values. Don’t take it from me that this is about the fundamental issue of honesty. Take it from three of the Court’s Justices themselves! In a remarkable and scathing dissent, the three women on the court, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Ginsburg said:
“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so today,” Sotomayor wrote. “After expressly relying on the availability of the religious-nonprofit accommodation to hold that the contraceptive coverage requirement violates [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] as applied to closely held for-profit corporations, the Court now, as the dissent in Hobby Lobby feared it might, retreats from that position.”
There’s also the fact that all five of them are men, and all five of them are Catholics. They’re basically channeling the Vatican. Yes, I think that’s dishonest, and unconstitutional.
You know that accusation that was thrown at both Alfred Smith and JFK when they were running for president; that one about taking their orders from the Vatican because they were Catholic? Remember how JFK dealt with it, with a speech on the separation of church and state?
Seems like these five Catholics agreed less with JFK than they did with his critics.
The farther I get from being raised a Catholic, the more I think about what I was taught even by liberal Catholics, the more I think of the Catholic Church as a magisterium of evil.
Who will guard the guards? Who will police the police?
And who will judge the judges?
This makes me extremely glad that Catholics have been so rarely represented in our Presidents. JFK is apparently the only one – amirite? And they had to assassinate him, so I guess he wasn’t a “good ENOUGH Catholic.”
MEN should not be passing rulings that apply solely to women. That is unjust! In a case like this, the three women on the bench should be the ones making the ruling, with their male colleagues offering their wise counsel as the women justices make their decisions. BY themselves.
I can’t help notice that, in all this brouhaha about not covering contraception for women, nobody has made a peep about applying that same non-coverage to vasectomies…which are something that only men can get…
Vasectomies being a form of contraception that are only available to men, that is.
Blanche: I’m not sure that vasectomies are covered by insurance anyway. It would be interesting to find out.
Somebody on a political blog predicted that Hobby Lobby was the Roberts’ Court Two-Step. Step one would be issuing a narrow opinion that would hardly effect anybody followed by step 2: broadening the ruling to effect everyone. I wish they had been joking/wrong.
You’re right, chrislawson. If only the men who want and need vasectomies would raise their voices along with our (women’s) voices for contraception coverage, we might get somewhere.
Or not, with everything being decided by unethical, Catholic-agenda-driven Catholic men wielding Supreme Court decisions like a club.
Looks like Hobby Lobby doesn’t have a problem covering vasectomies or Viagra. Mentioned in HuffPo and Forbes, though I haven’t found a direct citation (and apparently Hobby Lobby isn’t talking). Vasectomy coverage is fairly common, or it was a few years ago when I last checked.
Which the frothy one claimed listening to made him want to throw up.
A bigot judge saying ‘This is not a precedent, but…’ should be taken exactly as seriously as a bigot saying ‘I’m nit a racist/sexist/homophobe, but…’ It’s disingenuous bullshit, which should be seen to signal its opposite, pretty much every time. It means ‘I know this is bad law, and so I want to pretend the sophistry I’m about to introduce is about an issue which is worth some Special Pleading because Jesus.’
UGH. DAmmit!
Jackie Kennedy (pre-Onassis) made a response about JFK’s catholicism being a problem in government, to the effect of “I can understand people wondering about Robert, but Jack’s…. such a Poor Catholic!’
I have been argueing the ramifications of this with a quite catholic relative – and I had missed this ’emergency’ ruling. she has so far been unwilling to believe that it’s ‘a big deal’ or open to abuses…….!!!
Correct me if I am wrong (please, do) but wasn’t the point of the ruling that they didn’t, as a corporation, want to pay – themselves – for the contraception in question. If someone else is paying for it, it ceases to be their money, correct? What the hell am I missing here!!