The Hobby Lobby Cacophany

A plea to everyone on both sides of the Hobby Lobby debate – please take one deep breath and two steps back. The person you’re glaring at on the other side of the issue is not evil – not a baby-killer, not a misogynist. He or she is simply a person with another point of view, most likely developed through reasoned, logical thought. You probably don’t think that view is legitimate. But, like it or not, in the pluralistic society established by the US Constitution, it is legitimate.

Competing constitutional rights often collide. This particular case is especially volatile because it involves two of our most basic guarantees – equal protection under the law, and freedom of religion. The Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – mandates all employers provide certain types of contraception to all female employees. There is a narrow exemption for religious organizations and their direct affiliates for the contraception mandate only.

The owners of two closely held corporations, Hobby Lobby, who are Pentecostals, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, who are Mennonites, claimed they should also be exempt, saying the mandate violates their religious belief that certain types of contraception are immoral. A divided U.S. Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the closely held corporations – corporations owned and/or managed by small groups of businesspeople or companies – should, indeed, be exempt.

That’s the two paragraph thumbnail. Arguments don’t fit well into thumbnails, so I won’t even try, at least not now. Today, I have only one goal – to promote civil discourse in a system that is and always will be adversarial. That means respecting the other side’s right to present its argument, even though you may reject the merits of that argument. Can you do that?

A few weeks ago, during a discussion on journalistic ethics in my Communication Theory class, I needed to give an on-the-fly example of the difference between something that is perfectly legal, but also considered immoral. The first thing that came to mind was divorce. As a societal function, divorce is completely acceptable. There are no direct civil penalties. The Catholic Church, however, believes sacramental marriage is permanent and, therefore, divorce and remarriage is immoral.

American society easily accommodates the religious objection to divorce because it only affects a Catholic’s relationship with the Church, not the law. But the contraception objection does conflict with civil law. Hence the Supreme Court’s need to balance the legitimate legal right to equal protection under the law, with the legitimate right to resist actions defined by a religion as immoral.

As in most conflicts between what’s legal and what’s moral, there’s not much wiggle room. Those who object for religious reasons should remember that the U.S. is not a “Christian nation,” but a nation founded mainly by Christians who saw the wisdom of keeping religious institutions out of the business of governing, while at the same time allowing everyone the right to worship freely without government interference. And those who believe religious protections are secondary should recognize that the law is always a balancing act, and that the Founding Fathers so valued freedom of religion they included it in the First Amendment, not the second, third, or tenth.

The tone of the argument is critical because there will always be disagreements. One function of religious communities in our civic discourse is to argue the moral basis for good law and moral enforcement, while policy advocates should recognize the legitimacy of deeply-held religious beliefs. We can’t expect competing sides to ever come to a consensus. But we should expect a civil, respectful debate. That’s something the ideals of both sides require.