Hobby Lobby and Religious Freedom

This week, oral arguments were heard in the Hobby Lobby case. The Hobby
Lobby corporation wants to be exempted from the Affordable Care Act's
requirement that employer sponsored health insurance must provide
contraceptives at no cost to the employee. The owners of the company
happen to be right-wing christians (no big surprise there). This is a
bit disconcerting. Can a corporation have religious freedom rights?

I don't think so. Most of the arguments were made on this point.
Most of the supporters of Hobby Lobby's position seem to think that the
corporation's rights are the same as the owner's rights. However, I do
not believe that the US Constitution allows for corporate entities to be
considered equivalent to a citizen of the US. Can a corporation then
vote? Or be counted by the census? Can it serve in the armed forces?
Can it hold public office? Can it serve on a jury? If we must extend
religious freedom to a corporations, we must extend these other rights
and responsibilities to them.

The most troubling aspect of this is that it would allow the corporation
to violate the religious freedoms of it's employees. Would they be
allowed to require it's employees to go to church? After all, the
employee would have to make accommodation for their company's religious
stance. What about other religiously fraught debates? If a gay man works
for Hobby Lobby, and is in a state that allows same-sex marriage, can
they deny his partner health coverage when they get married?

I heard a program on NPR that had a panel discussing this. Every member
of the panel except one referred to the medications in question as contraceptives. That is the purpose of these drugs, to prevent conception. The lone standout was one of the attorneys for Hobby Lobby. He insisted on
calling them "abortion drugs". This is one of the ways that the religious
right operates. If they are against something, they try to change the
terminology to make their position look like the best one, regardless of
the science or other facts that oppose them. Calling contraceptives
"abortion drugs" is deceptive at best. It is an attempt to paint all
women who use them as being sexually promiscuous and having low regard
for human life. It refuses to acknowledge that there can be other
reasons to use them, unrelated to preventing pregnancy. It refuses to
acknowledge the fact that monogamous heterosexual married couples may
need to use them to become temporarily infertile so they can have
children on their own schedule. It completely ignores the rights of all
people to control their own bodies.

I am certainly hoping that the Supreme Court decides this against Hobby
Lobby. That would maintain the freedom of the most people.