Let’s set aside the war on women for a moment and look at the war on our fucking wallets. All the intelligent commentary I’ve read about the Hobby Lobby decision nets out to the fact that religious quibbles about the whys, wherefores and consequences of ejaculation are the sole and solemn justification for closely-held corporations to weasel out of a bill that they want to shirk. (Of course, that’s only if the target of said ejaculation is a vagina, since the Court specifically held that Hobby Lobby can’t mess with gay employees.) Since the court also held that the government could pay for contraception because the Hobby Lobbyists won’t, that means that we’re paying to support Hobby Lobby’s closely held breeder fetish.
It’s not bad enough that we’re all paying for the Medicaid coverage of the Hobby Lobby (and Wal-Mart, Target, etc) employees who can’t make a living on the shit wages those places pay. Now we have to buy IUDs and birth control pills for the rare employees who make enough to purchase a policy on the Exchange (which, I assume, given their low pay, will be a heavily subsidized policy).
In other words, Hobby Lobby is coming to the government, hat in hand. In addition to Medicaid and Exchange subsidies, they are begging for a custom, Jesus-flavored cherry on top of their government benefit package, because of the special feels they feel whenever one of their employees fucks without reproductive intent.
I realize that women are mad about this, and well they should be. The Supremes just put a hand-embossed “fuck you” into the mail to over half of the population. And any man with half a brain and a working penis should be pissed about the cock-blocking aspects of Hobby Lobby’s war to separate women from their IUDs. But even those among us who can no longer be roused to sexual congress should be roused to political action, because Hobby Lobby is digging into everyone else’s wallets in their Biblical quest to spare their own.
big ole hound
Right on. Lots of free publicity but I would bet the cost of an IUD that this hurts the bottom line.
MattF
I can see the corporate mooching angle– but that seems to me to miss the deep contradiction here. After all, conservatives are supposed to be the advocates of individual liberty. right? So, why, exactly, does religious liberty for corporations trump sexual liberty for individuals?
srv
Forcing your twisted values onto someone else comes with a cost.
the Conster
@MattF:
fixd for accuracy. and there’s your answer. This is woman-hating jurisprudence in all its mansplainin’ glory.
Anya
This will not change anything. Great majority of white women will continue to vote for the republicans and support their destructive policies.
scav
Bluntly, more than the simple cost of pills and potions they’re passing along to taxpayers there’ll also be the tab for the some proportion of the resulting snowflakes because until their corporate allies manage to bring back child labor (moreover child labor at living rate so forget that) some of those additional arrows will break the quivers budget. But they’re working full time on reducing that obligation too, because those pernicious entitled moochers shouldn’t be encouraged like that. Privatize the Profit and Outsource the hard work of Personal Salvation.
This Brave Holy Nation on a Shining Hill apparently apparently has no compelling interest in the autonomy of half its citizens let alone the means to argue pharmaceutical reality v. magic beans belief in the highest court of the land.
Mr. Longform
It’s not about the bottom line, ultimately. If corporations really wanted to truly get away with paying the lowest possible wages and spending as little as possible on their employees, they would be pushing for single payer health care. Single payer relieves them of having to deal with health care at all, makes it something the losers who pay taxes have to deal with, and they can concentrate completely on paying terrible wages to part-time serfs. But corporations also desperately want to make poor people as unhappy as possible. How that helps the bottom line, I can’t figure out, but it is obviously part of the corporate philosophy. And poor people having health care taken care of would make them way less miserable than they are supposed to be.
Davis X. Machina
@Anya:People forget this. A little too much ‘demography is destiny’ stuff out there.
What’s Up with White Women? They Voted for Romney, Too, John Cassidy, 11/12/2012, Tthe New Yorker
Maybe nominating a women might help?
Calouste
Btw, if you are looking for a company to boycott with regards to the Hobby Lobby decision, and you would never go to a Hobby Lobby in the first place, Eden Organic Foods was one of the plaintiffs as well. Run by a libertarian nut job by the looks of it.
Matt McIrvin
@Davis X. Machina: That’s not a reverse gender gap, unless Romney was more popular with white women than with white men (and I don’t think he was).
That’s a race gap.
Betty Cracker
@Anya: Do you consider 56% a “great majority”? I choose to see it as 6 measly percentage points that can be shifted.
Davis X. Machina
@Matt McIrvin: Race? What’s that? We got rid of that eons ago….
Patrick
@Betty Cracker:
To me it is mind-boggling that the Republican (considering his policies towards women) candidate even had a majority, let alone 56%.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ll bet you’re right about part of it, but how much of it was also an age issue?
Old white women are assholes. And I can say that, being one and all.
RSA
@Mr. Longform:
I think it’s made more complicated by American capitalism being mixed with views from libertarians, Randites, Calvinists, prosperity gospel Christians, and who knows what else. The people who run corporations do want to pay as little as possible, but they also want to avoid any positive benefits from their actions accruing to undeserving moochers and proto-moochers (i.e., those who don’t work for them and those who do).
schrodinger's cat
@geg6: You are different, you feed kittens.
⚽️ Martin
Exactly. Jesus’s message is always favorable to the bottom line.
@Mr. Longform:
Many employers up to now have been relieved of having to deal with health care at all, and relieved of having to pay taxes for it as well. Only 60% of workers receive any kind of coverage through work. The other 40% are getting a free ride now. ACA will change that. ACA will also mean that employer provided coverage stops being a competitive advantage for hiring, and they’ll steadily move to drop it. In the end, they’ll side with single payer, but not yet.
Mnemosyne
@Davis X. Machina:
Weird that Cassidy buries his lede and doesn’t really discuss that the large gap is specifically married white women:
IIRC, single white women also voted for Romney, but the gap was much closer to 50/50.
@Matt McIrvin:
When pundits talk about the “gender gap,” it’s with the understanding that it favors Democrats. That’s why Romney doing better is considered a “reverse gender gap,” since it’s an unusual situation where the gender gap favors Republicans.
I do agree with you, though — it’s not a gender gap, it’s a race gap.
Iowa Old Lady
Someone tell me not to engage on FB. It’s pointless and makes my blood pressure spike.
Mutant Poodle
Much as I despise the SCOTUS ruling in Hobby Lobby, it is unfair to lump them in with Walmart w.r.t wages when they pay their full-time entry level workers $14+ an hour.
I do think anyone who takes the bible literally is a little nuts, but he is paying a (barely) living wage – especially in many of the locations Hobby Lobby has.
Betty Cracker
@Patrick: It’s mind-boggling to me that Republicans crack 27% in any demographic at any level.
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne: And class. Getting married at this point is rapidly becoming a class-signifier, a form of conspicuous consumption.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: We have to thank the MSM for that. They give Republicans cover by their both sides BS. It makes the Repubs appear saner than they are.
Mnemosyne
@Davis X. Machina:
True. Ironically, it’s the wedding-industrial complex that’s killing off marriage — a lot of people are deciding that they don’t want to drop $20K+ on a big wedding, so they don’t bother to get married at all.
PaulB
It’s not quite as straightforward as that. If Obama chooses to adopt the same practice he’s using elsewhere, Hobby Lobby would complete a form stating that they will not offer contraception coverage to their employees. At that point, the executive branch would instruct the insurance companies to offer the coverage to the women directly at no additional cost. No government money needed.
Of course, Hobby Lobby will object to signing that piece of paper and to the extension of the coverage, and there are already lawsuits on this wending their way through the system, but the majority opinion pretty clearly indicated that this fix would be treated differently than the Hobby Lobby case.
See http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/how-obama-can-fix-birth-control-gap-created-by-scotus for more details.
schrodinger's cat
@Iowa Old Lady: I must be one of the very few people who don’t have a FB account. Do.not.want.
Main reason : I have some crazy relatives.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Marriage license + couple of witnesses + Notary
<<$20,000.
⚽️ Martin
@Mnemosyne: It’s not married vs single. It’s age. The average age of whites in the US is 41. The average age of latinos is 27. The GOP gets old voters, and among old voters, most (80%) are white where only half of young voters are. So when you break down white women, you’re also getting an age bias along for the ride. When you break down single/married, you get even more of an age bias.
So you’re getting older people, and older women that grew up in a different era of contraception rights, that are no longer personally affected (even the kids of the average GOP voter is an adult), etc.
scav
@Iowa Old Lady: If you’re actually in Iowa, you may still be enjoying the same post-storm dip in temperatures that we managed in Chicago. Go out and enjoy it while it lasts, even if it just means sitting in a shady place with lemonade. Stare at some corn for me if possible, then stare at some soybeans. Maybe a few peonies for grace notes, some of those back rounds apparently witness hard-fought peony-offs between facing farms. I promise you, the idiots on FB will be there when you return.
Paul in KY
@Iowa Old Lady: Don’t engage on FB. That’s an order from your fake doctor.
C.V. Danes
@Mr. Longform:
Yeah, I never understood why corporations aren’t pushing for this. They sob endlessly into their stock options about America’s tax policy and bla bla bla, but they dig their heels in when it comes to single payer health care? There’s obviously some kind of evilness going on there.
scav
@Betty Cracker: 27% is just the Batshit-Crazy baseline. We’ve got to add in the Cussed Mean-Spirited and Sanctimonious Squad numbers to that.
C.V. Danes
@Davis X. Machina:
You mean like Condoleezza Rice?
Patrick
@Betty Cracker:
True indeed. I think I read somewhere that over 40% of all Union members vote Republican…
C.V. Danes
@Patrick:
A lot of Handmaid’s Tales out there wanting to be written, I guess.
Morzer
@Iowa Old Lady:
Facebook is where the sociopaths come out to play. Avoidance is advised.
C.V. Danes
@Betty Cracker:
It’s hard to be a liberal. It’s easy to hate. I am certainly oversimplifying it, but not by much.
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: The tax advantages alone pay for it. But that’s not the way it looks to the average starry-eyed mid-20’s punter.
C.V. Danes
@schrodinger’s cat:
And if you get the family to chip in and have a party, still <<$20,000
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, but it’s gotten so ingrained in some people’s heads that You Must Have A Big Wedding that many of them aren’t bothering to go down to the courthouse and do the paperwork if there’s not a Big Wedding attached. Unless you need to do it for insurance reasons, why bother?
Kay
I love how much intrigue and mystery they create around womens medical issues.
They’re really close to dunking the witches to see if they float, at this point:
“In his opinion, Alito contends that these four contraception methods “may have the effect of preventing an already fertilized egg from developing any further by inhibiting its attachment to the uterus.” He does not cite any science to back this up. Instead, in a footnote, Alito concedes that Hobby Lobby’s religious-based assertions are contradicted by science-based federal regulations: “The owners of the companies involved in these cases and others who believe that life begins at conception regard these four methods as causing abortions, but federal regulations, which define pregnancy as beginning at implantation, do not so classify them.” Still, he and the other conservative justices are saying that in a conflict between a religious view and scientific research, religion wins.”
This stuff goes so freaking deep. It really, really is all about The Other and agency and power.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/supreme-court-hobby-lobby-decision
Gypsy Howell
@Calouste:
http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/view.php?articles_id=219
Yep, total fuckin nut job.
As for the other named plaintiff, Conestoga Wood– I’ve outfitted two kitchens with their cabinets. Wonderful quality product, quick deleviery, did some customization for us, great price. Now that I have another kitchen to do, I’m bummed that I’ll have to find another source, but I’ll be good and goddamned if I’ll buy from them again.
dww44
@Anya: Yep, a cousin of mine posted a photo of something to the effect that ” The Republican Party supports Hobby Lobby” and the sole responses she got were from women. I make a general rule to stay off the political on Facebook pages in general and for relatives in particular, but I did post that I was gobsmacked that any woman was pleased with the Supreme Court ruling.
Can’t wait to ask her how she feels that apparently Hobby Lobby was previously paying for contraception coverage for women and still pays for erectile dysfunction meds for men.
C.V. Danes
@Mnemosyne: I think it has to do with where you are in life. My first wedding, I was young and went big. We were divorced 10 years later. Wife #2, we lived together for 5 years before we got married, had a much smaller family wedding, and have been together for almost 20 years and still going strong.
Betty Cracker
@Gypsy Howell:
Good for you. You might want to contact the local outfit that did your first two kitchens and let them know why they won’t be getting your repeat business.
C.V. Danes
@Betty Cracker:
I think this is generally good as a matter of conscience, but for every one of us who boycotts them, there’s going to be a God Fearin’ conservative to step in and fill the gap. Not saying you shouldn’t do it as a matter of conscience, but they’re not going to go broke if we decide to shop elsewhere.
Kay
I keep thinking back to how Justice Ginsberg predicted states would all put in voter suppression laws after the VRA was gutted, and then they did, and she did that “I told you so” tour.
She warned about this one, too, and I tend to believe her over the rest of the legal commentators at this point.
That’s her role now. “I was right. Again”
Betty Cracker
@C.V. Danes: Possibly, but if I’m Joe Blow, CW-affiliated contractor, who undertook two profitable jobs for a good customer and then received a call telling me they were taking their business elsewhere because of my corporate partner’s political grandstanding, that would certainly give me pause.
Generally speaking, businesses don’t like to get embroiled in controversies because it’s bad for business. Rush Limbaugh’s slut-shaming cost his media partner all kinds of ad revenue. It’s true that the corpulent toad is as rich and obnoxious as ever, but there was a hit to the bottom line.
Ditto the Chik fil A god-botherer, who has since forsworn inflicting his religious views on the public despite the many “CFA Appreciation Days” idiots like Sarah Palin promoted.
C.V. Danes
@Betty Cracker: Go for it. Can’t hurt :-)
⚽️ Martin
@C.V. Danes:
Yes they will. Boycotts almost always work. The boycotters remember their boycotts long after the fact and the boycotts spread. Exxon is still suffering from their boycotts from the late 80s at retail locations. The folks that will step in will only do so for a short period. Nobody is going to initiate a kitchen remodel for the sake of propping up sales from a boycott. Chick Fil A got a nice surge of interest for a weekend, and from there out the boycotters won.
My wife is involved in girl scouts and they do a lot of craft things. They quite proudly advertise that they get none of their craft supplies at Hobby Lobby. Even the really religious girls and their moms support that move (I’ve noticed when dad isn’t around).
No, boycotts do all manner of harm if they actually take root because their effects spread well beyond the boycotters.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: If it’s all about the wedding, and not about the marriage, maybe it’s best if they don’t get married in the first place.
schrodinger's cat
@WaterGirl: Word. I was going to say so myself.
Thymezone
Why don’t we (a) have figures on how many low wage workers (there are 40 million plus) will be able to leave Medicaid if the minimum wage is raised, (b) truthfully represent a raised minimum wage as a government cost saving measure, and (c) thereby force employers to pay workers enough to remove them from Medicaid rolls?
Since the only useful goal here is to raise the minimum wage, why don’t we stop talking as if WalMart, McDonalds and Starbucks are the only low wage employers? Over 90 percent of low wage workers don’t work for these companies. And so far not one fucking nickel of wage increases has resulted from constantly bashing the employers by name, so in case you are not paying fucking attention, this approach is not working and not one low wage worker is getting anything from it but heartburn. Only the government can solve this problem. That would be the American government, you know, the one you vote for.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@WaterGirl: It’s not necessarily the happy couple who have Big Wedding stars in their eyes. The pressure to have the entire extended family attend, unto the fifth cousins, is enormous. Denying the family their party is never, ever forgiven.
Mnemosyne
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
I do sometimes wonder if We’re saving up for the big wedding is really I can’t stand your family and don’t want to deal with them in that high-pressure situation.
tazj
I have to stay off Facebook and other websites as well. According to most men that are posting and some women, we who disagree with the Hobby Lobby decision are all a bunch of whiners.
Putting aside the fact that the prevention of pregnancy itself is a very important public health concern since some women can die or suffer serious complications from pregnancy, the choice of birth control is important too. Different birth control pills contain different hormones and different concentrations of said hormones they’re not all the same.
I realize that the Hobby Lobby lawsuit was about IUD’s and drugs like Ella. Is it even discussed that certain IUD’s like Mirena are thought to be better at preventing endometriosis than the regular birth control pill? I had a bowel obstruction caused by my endo.
Some women I know through infertility forums use a hormonal IUD because they got pregnant easily but miscarried easily too because of a balanced translocation and wanted a more effective birth control method than the pill before they tried IVF again.
It is so ridiculous to me that an employer can claim their religious rights are being violated because of a choice someone might make in their method of birth control. The fact that their beliefs are just that, not proven scientifically, and they believe themselves somehow complicit in what might happen in someone else’s body is crazy to me.
Thymezone
Okay, maybe I wasn’t clear. This is a country that religiously votes (I use the term advisedly) decade after decade for a government that keeps a pitifully low minimum wage … and then bitches like a schoolgirl day and night that low wage workers are costing us a lot of tax money.
Democracy only works if the causes and effects are somehow linked by some goddam facts and not by superstition and political platforms. You voted for this government (you’re the people, you see) and this is what you get. If you don’t like the result, vote for a different government and stop bitching about the tax burden of low wage workers. Until that minimum wage is raised, nothing is going to change.
Citizen Alan
@Davis X. Machina:
Yeah, mistermix seriously underestimates the percentage of blue-haired old biddies (which probably makes up a plurality of HL’s customer base) who are solidly Republican because they think abortion means “murdering Jesus’s precious snowflake babies.” And also that Obama is a Muslim. They still think that. I nearly dropped a c-word on a woman I didn’t even know yesterday when she went off on how Obama was a Muslim trying to destroy America. I hate these people more than I can say.
wenchacha
@Kay: I don’t understand how Alito can choose to allow that. And I doubt the Framers wanted church and state to be like a couple of teenagers making out: they do everything but.
I don’t understand how HoBlob can claim religious beliefs when they are in business with China, when they are invested in the “abortifacients” that they don’t want their employees to have. Was this argued by The People?
At the age of 56, I was never in real risk re: abortion. My risk was my Mom finding out, which was plenty enough drama to endure in my teen years. It is unimaginable to me that young women are being pushed closer and closer to back-alley abortions.
Idiocracy really was prescient. Did it include crazy religious stuff; I can’t recall.
Citizen Alan
@Iowa Old Lady:
The trick is to keep your friends list to people who are at least open to your views. Then, all you have to worry about is that one friend of a friend whose idiotic comments show up in your friend’s feeds. I usually message my friends and say “Hey, is being an asshole. Is he your favorite uncle or something or can I go off on him?” Usually, the response is something like “nah, he’s an asshole. I keep meaning to defriend him but I forget. Go to town.”
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Citizen Alan: I’ve hidden the feeds of the two people on my FB that are nuts (one is a gun nut cousin and the other a libertarian friend from college). No defriending, no hard feelings.
Citizen Alan
@Morzer:
Oh, please. Facebook is Gumdrop Mountain in comparison to the comments section of any major newspaper or, God forbid, the comments section of Youtube.
Thymezone
@Citizen Alan:
Yes, and it’s nursery school compared to Usenet. Our flame wars there lasted for years at a time.
Anya
@Betty Cracker: I think I read somewhere it was 60%. So, it’s not a “great majority” but it’s a big, undeserved majority. As you said in another comment, they should only win 27% of the batshit crazy.
Citizen Alan
@Thymezone:
You have that backwards. These people genuinely believed that if we stopped spending tax money on low wage workers, then wages would magically rise. The fact that this is irrational pales in comparison to the fact that it allows a certain type of individual to justify feeling jealous and bitter words poor people.
Morzer
@Citizen Alan:
I’ve explored both thoroughly enough to reach the conclusion I did. Keep your patronizing remarks to yourself.
Ben Cisco
SCOTUS majority after the decision.
North Carolina is lousy with Hobby Lobby stores. I’ve been only once, years ago. I can comfortably predict that Mrs. Cisco will NOT be going anywhere near another one.
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
I’ve only had to actually defriend on person. The last straw was his multiple comments defending the reputation of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Shortstop
But why stop at pointing out the governmental intervention now (ironically) required in HL’s case? There will presumably be calls for the one-step-removed provision as a solution to any number of “religious conviction” cases spawned by this “narrowly drawn” decision. That’s going to be a separate disaster sitting right on top of the foundational clusterfuck of allowing employers to decide what medical procedures they want to cover for their employees. Single payer is the obvious answer — but I wish I shared Martin’s optimism that anyone but the left will admit it, now or later.
Shortstop
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): That only works when they don’t come charging onto your or your friends’ timelines to share their wisdom in comment threads. I’ve hidden my own status updates from some of them, which helps, but I had no regrets about unfriending a couple of people who crapped all over the posts of people they don’t even know — my friends, not theirs. I axed my crazy stepmama-in-law with my head held high.
Shortstop
@Citizen Alan: was it that batshit guy who used to have continual ragegasms here? ;). I can’t remember his name now.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Shortstop: My FB social circle has largely decided to stay clear of politics. Vacation photos, music, and other random stuff seems to be the general order of the day. I guess I have been lucky.
kc
@Shortstop:
John Cole?
KIDDING!!!!
Shortstop
@kc: Haw. The hell was that guy’s name? Driving me crazy now. Something with cutesy fake olde tyme spelling. Def a Ren Faire devotee.
Shortstop
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Well, all it takes is one lunatic racist relative with an IQ of 79 to spoil the partay. When she started riffing on Trayvon Martin’s “thuggery,” I hit the button.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne:
I think it’s that they can’t think properly about multiple causal effects. Here we have more women (of a certain type) going for the Republican than the Democrat–but it doesn’t mean that their gender made them more inclined to vote Republican, which is what I’d personally read “reverse gender gap” to mean.
Patricia Kayden
“I realize that women are mad about this, and well they should be.”
Republicans still get the support and votes of the majority of White women, so this is not true. I don’t get why any woman supports the GOP (or any Blacks or gays for that matter).
Gypsy Howell
Prediction if we ever get to anything like single payer in this country:
We will have a Hyde-type Amendment that prohibits the government from paying for birth control because of religious butthurt fee fees.
Count on it.
Citizen Alan
@Shortstop:
No. It was a college kid, a friend of a friend, who got a poli-sci degree from Ole Miss and is now living with his mother because he’s unemployable.
Chet
@Citizen Alan:
Anecdotes ≠ data, I know, but in my experience a lot of the wingnuttiest of wingnuts (Christian Right variety) out there are female.
I think a lot of it also comes, ironically enough, from resentment over younger women having career and lifestyle options, more satisfying sex lives (or at least the opportunity thereof), etc. that they themselves never did.
They had to live under patriarchy and enter loveless, sexless marriages and start pumping out babies right out of high school, so goddammit, all those young hussies ought to to.