Let us try to wrap our heads around something that is at once entirely expected and wholly unbelievable:
When Obamacare compelled businesses to include emergency contraception in employee health care plans, Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores, fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court. The Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, the company’s owners argued, forced them to violate their religious beliefs. But while it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm’s owners cite in their lawsuit.
Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company’s owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).
Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby’s health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.
(Redden)
No, really.
In truth, it seems something like a Homer Simpson moment:
“I kicked a giant mouse in the butt! Do I have to draw you a diagram?”
No, really, can we all see the problem?
The Hobby Lobby argument, as such:
• These drugs, products, and services are objectionable to Hobby Lobby’s corporate-person conscience insofar as it should not be obliged to provide for their employees’ sinful behavior.
• However, these drugs, products, and services are not objectionable to Hobby Lobby’s corporate-person conscience insofar as it should certainly seek financial reward from investing in products that their employees should not have insured access to.
Can we all admit that the only part of the alleged Christian conscience of the Green family showing through here is their thorough and unmitigated hatred of women?
Are these really the American family values conservatives tout? Or have all those praying in solidarity with Hobby Lobby simply been betrayed?
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Photo credit: Jay Mallin/ZUMA
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