The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision has thrown a huge wrench into what's left of our democracy by allowing corporations to have the same rights as people to have their voices heard, giving them the ability to spend all the money they want on political campaigns, which of course gives them undue influence over our elections.
Now we have a new, very problematic issue to worry about: SCOTUS will get to decide if corporations can impose their own religious beliefs on their employees, AKA a giant conscience clause. What's left of separation of church and state could become a distant memory.
Michael Hiltzik's column in the Los Angeles Times rightly states, "The implications of granting corporations the right to free expression of religion are horrific."
He sounds the alarm loudly on the expansion of corporate "personhood," which would give them "the legal right to fire workers 'for engaging in all manner of activities that may not conform to the religious code of the company’s owners, including using contraceptives or terminating a pregnancy, becoming pregnant out of wedlock, or marrying a person of the same sex.'”
The Obama administration arguably gave too much away when it offered religious groups a way around meeting the contraception mandates of the Affordable Care Act for their secular arms, such as hospitals that serve secular communities and hire staff without regard to religious affiliation. We're seeing a steady encroachment of religious dogma into medical treatment [...]
Giving corporations the status of religious beings would do more than inject religion into the workplace. It would take the community out. Nothing is more threatening to religious freedom than the imposition of religious orthodoxy in places where it doesn't belong. That's the issue that will soon come before the Supreme Court. Brace yourselves.
The post What next? Ruling that corporations can pray? Brace yourselves. appeared first on The Political Carnival.
