Remember Hobby Lobby? That corporate use of personal religious freedom to make decisions about employees’ benefits?
Guess what? Did anyone really think that decision would stay put and never been seen again? Because Wheaton College decision came out 3 days later? But still, maybe, just maybe it could have been buried.
But wait! The Fundamentalist LDS, have decided not to pay kids to harvest pecans. The Department of Labor is investigating labor violations. FLDS leaders claim they do not have to testify because “religious freedom.”
So I wonder what else the FLDS have religious freedom for? Perhaps child sex assault? Do we need to let Warren Jeffs out of prison because of “religious freedom”?
Do Lutherans have the same protection? How about followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Judge David Sam is in a federal court, and overruled another judge who was a magistrate. I am not a lawyer and welcome the help of lawyers to explain this better. It just seems to be that “religious freedom” just became a huge legal reason to not do anything you didn’t feel like doing.
Ironically, the judge deciding the case chose to not investigate the religious beliefs:
“It is not for the Court to “inquir[e] into the theological merit of the belief in question,” Sam wrote, citing the Hobby Lobby decision. “The determination of what is a ‘religious’ belief or practice is more often than not a difficult and delicate task …. However, the resolution of that question is not to turn upon a judicial perception of the particular belief or practice in question; religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection.”
I think that any religious group could have cited Hobby Lobby in any variety of cases, and it is just luck that it happened here first. This is not limited to the FLDS. And please remember, this is not an opportunity for you to bash the LDS. If you need to do that, please write your own diary.
Please do not use this diary for LDS or Mormon bashing.