LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

‘Hobby’ case hurts individuals

7/31/2014

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision is not a victory for individual freedom (“Fix religious freedom law,” guest editorial, July 15).

The ruling places the religious preferences of the few — business owners — above the freedom of the many — employees — over access to contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

The hypocrisy of Hobby Lobby’s claims is stunning when you consider that its owners’ religious convictions do not prevent them from importing products from Chinese factories with a reputation for labor rights violations and rock-bottom wages.

Individuals have legitimate religious rights. For-profit corporations, however, are not inherently religious. Their employees are not from the same, if any, religious background as the owners, making owners’ claims to religious “rights” absurd.

The ruling makes a mockery of constitutional religious freedom by extending it to for-profit corporations. People who value freedom should support grass-roots activism via Move to Amend, which seeks a constitutional amendment that would abolish corporate personhood and stop pro-corporate judicial activism.

DOUG JAMBARD-SWEET

Maumee

Editor’s note: The writer is coordinator of the Toledo affiliate of Move to Amend.

 

Click here to submit a letter to the editor.

 

Conservatives are for women’s rights

Conservative Christians are for women’s rights (“Faith claims ignore rights of women,” Readers’ Forum, July 16). Women are free to have privacy in they way they live sexually. They can use any birth control they want.

But they cannot commit murder. Any birth control that kills an unborn human is murder. Where are the rights of the unborn?

The Republican Party seems to be more responsive to keeping the basic laws that all religions have in one form or another, and that our nation was founded on. One of those laws is that humans aren’t to commit murder.

How many potential leaders, scientists, teachers, doctors, and musicians have been murdered because selfish women only think of themselves, not the good of society?

DARLENE STAMMER

Temperance

Don’t be quick to rip Hobby Lobby

Did the protesters in front of a local Hobby Lobby store realize that this company has been one of the most generous toward its employees, with good pay, excellent benefits, and educational opportunities (“About 40 protest top court decision in front of Hobby Lobby in Toledo,” July 5)?

Because it refuses to pay for four abortifacients, but will pay for 16 forms of artificial birth control, Hobby Lobby is anti-woman? I hope that most women define themselves by much more than their capacity to prevent fertility.

This was an excellent Supreme Court ruling that protects the First Amendment rights of business owners.

CYNTHIA MILLEN

Ottawa Hills