The War on Women

Posted on July 27, 2012 by John C Wright

The woman in this case is the Holy Mother Church.

William, Paul and James Newland and their sister, Christine Ketterhagen, who together own Hercules Industries, have no right to conduct their family business in a manner that comports with their Catholic faith.

The federal government can and will compel them to either surrender their business or to engage in activities the Catholic faith teaches are intrinsically immoral.

This is exactly what President Barack Obama’s Justice Department told a U.S. district court in a formal filing last week.

Never before has an administration taken such a bold step to strip Americans of the freedom of conscience — a right for which, over the centuries, many Christian martyrs have laid down their lives, and which our Founding Fathers took great care to protect in a First Amendment that expressly guarantees the free exercise of religion.

Read the whole thing here:
http://townhall.com/columnists/terryjeffrey/2012/07/25/doj_family_cant_run_their_business_as_catholics

About John C Wright

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
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6 Responses to The War on Women

  1. J. W. says:
    July 27, 2012 at 4:08 pm

    “It is well established that a corporation and its owners are wholly separate entities, and the Court should not permit the Newlands to eliminate that legal separation to impose their personal religious beliefs on the corporate entity or its employees,” said the Justice Department.

    Ed Whelan ably mocks the DOJ’s argument here:

    To illustrate how mindnumbingly ridiculous DOJ’s position is, consider this hypothetical:

    A Jewish family operates a deli and incorporates its business. Implementing its religious beliefs, the family keeps the deli closed on the Jewish Sabbath. But the federal government enacts a law that requires that all food-service businesses engaged in interstate commerce be open seven days a week.

    Can anyone take seriously DOJ’s position that the deli owners don’t even have a cognizable claim against the law under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they have incorporated their business?

  2. Joshua says:
    July 27, 2012 at 10:29 pm

    Reuters says the judge granted the family here at least temporary relief, though it mentions that a similar lawsuit involving other parties was recently dismissed.

  3. Sandy Petersen says:
    July 30, 2012 at 9:04 pm

    One could argue that, just as the Jewish deli would have no business forcing its workers to attend temple on Saturday, the couple that runs Hercules has no business telling its employees what they do with the health care with which they are provided.

    I am somewhat uneasy making this argument, because I, in fact, strongly oppose abortion. But there it is.

    • Tom Simon says:
      July 30, 2012 at 10:41 pm

      Not really a good analogy. More like a Gentile employee at a Jewish deli suing his employer to provide him with free pork.

    • J. W. says:
      July 31, 2012 at 4:27 pm

      Terrible analogy. You can work for their business and in return they provide you with a plan that covers X, Y, and Z. If you want to go elsewhere for the rest of the alphabet, you are totally free to do so. Your complaint is akin to that of a worker who is given a company car and says he’s being forced not to drive a truck. No, actually, he can go get a truck and drive it if he so pleases.

    • Mrmandias says:
      July 31, 2012 at 5:19 pm

      If the owners had a job requirement that employees not use contraception, that would be problematic, I agree.

      But that is very different from this case, where the owners are objecting to paying for healthcare that funds contraception.

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