Opening the can of worms...

Do Corporations have Religious Rights..and can they Impose them on Workers?

Where but in America do we ask old men beyond their sexual years to make decisions about sex for all of us? Well, at least this time we've added three women to the Supreme Court mix, but that only assures three votes that will reflect a high degree of sanity.

The issue before the Supreme Court this week in lay terms (pun intended) was this: Do corporations have the same rights as citizens? And do those rights extend to the right to freely practice their religious beliefs by refusing to pay for contraception for their workers as part of their health insurance program?

Not being a lawyer I could not possibly come up with one or more arguments that members of that most august body of practitioners could conjure up, could I? Of course not. Therefore I should keep my thoughts to myself and let those noncombatants fight it out. Right? They all know, for example, that the true owners of a for profit, public corporation are the stockholders, and not the CEO, isn't that right? So in the case of a large corporation such as IBM we are talking about perhaps 50,000 shareholders, maybe more. Would each of those shareholders have veto power over the CEO's decision? Would they all need to be in agreement? I'm sure the lawyers have thought this issue issue through down to the cost of a pack of Trojans.

And they have also thought about the injury done to one person's religious beliefs by that employee with that pack of Trojans safely tucked away in his or her pocket. Yes, even the idea of an employee protecting his health against sexually transmitted diseases must surely be an affront against somebody's sexual proclivities, or his church's, or someone in his church's hierarchy. I'll bet a good lawyer can even name the guilty and the innocent in these lines of authority.

But this issue has tentacles that could reach far beyond condoms. It could reach as far as the influence of religion reaches. Some religions preach that it is a sin to so much as to doubt even one of their beliefs. That is called the sin of heresy, and that church you may recall tried, imprisoned, and slaughtered millions of its brethren during the 684 years that historians have called the Inquisitions. Would the Supreme Court's decision reawaken this dark era, and allow that practice to permeate the minds of corporate officers, thence to be transmitted to its workers in the name of religious freedom?

There are approximately 4,200 religions in the world. Most have representation in the United States. Most are probably well-intentioned, but most also have their share of fruitcakes and loony-tuned nincompoops within their ranks. Beliefs are probably as far fetched and as scattered-brained as are the limits of human lunacy. Now that the Supreme Court has opened their doors and welcomed religions in to decide if they have standing in a just society, how can they in the same spirit of justice deny any one of these groups their day in court?