Corporations Suddenly Don’t Have Religious Freedom if They Support Marriage Equality

Corporations apparently have religious freedom if they are against contraception, but they have no right to speak up about marriage equality…

Ever since the Supreme Court decided on January 16 to tackle the issue, everyone is waiting to see how the SCOTUS will rule in the matter of marriage equality. Hundreds of briefs have been filed.

Most surprising of all, last Thursday, 300 Republicans filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to recognize same-sex marriage.

Time magazine reveals a surprise or two among the signatories (view the full list here):

Among the signatories are 23 current and former Republicans members of the House of Representatives and Senate and seven current and former Governors. Sens. Susan Collins and Mark Kirk have signed onto the brief, as has Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. Other notables include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal and billionaire GOP mega-donor David Koch.

Breitbart has determined that this brief shows the “GOP elite” wants the Supreme Court to “impose gay marriage on America.” This, despite the fact that a January CNN/ORC International survey “showed that 57% of Americans think gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to get married.”

How conservatives love those “majority rules” situations except when they don’t work in their favor.

The court will hear oral arguments on April 28 and rule by June. Naturally, the Religious Right is beside itself with worry that other people they despise will suddenly have the same right they do.

Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel says if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality it will de-legitimize itself by somehow creating a “special right” for gays over and above the rights the rest of us have:

I’m warning them, and I think the rest of the country is willing to come together and warn them, that they need to come back in line with their constitutional duty, and that is to interpret the law, not create brand new law and be our social engineers.

The Catholic News Agency (CNA) – ironically, since the Catholic Church was all for making corporations people with religious rights – now talks about of “big business overreach” because, as Reuters reported last week,

[A]lmost 400 businesses had filed a “friend of the court” brief favoring a redefinition of marriage in a set of cases before the Court that will decide whether states, under the Fourteenth Amendment, must grant same-sex “marriage” licenses and recognize “gay marriages” conducted in other states.

The list of overreaching companies include Facebook and Twitter, as well as Thompson Reuters Corporation, Disney, Starbucks, PepsiCo, Coca Cola, Viacom, Inc., Bloomberg, Verizon, DirectTV, Google (for once, doing no evil), Comcast, CBS, and AT&T. Even the NFL’s Super Bowl winning New England Patriots signed the brief.

CNA quotes one “expert” as telling them, “There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires the states to redefine marriage, and big business should not lobby the Supreme Court to say otherwise.”

Oh dear. So corporations only have religious freedoms when their desires coincide with yours. It’s okay for corporations to oppose contraception but how dare they support marriage equality? How morally relative of you!

Rick Wiles, who has previously asserted that America is a godless, Pagan cesspool, and fantasized about being enslaved by sodomites, is taking it a step further. He is now urging his flock to emulate their feckless leader by fleeing these shores for safe havens abroad.

I am not sure who the bigger clown is. There are so many to choose from.

Wiles fled to Costa Rica three years ago because God told him to “flee from the daughter of Babylon and not stay and participant in her sins and not be around when the nation is destroyed.”

So much for a thirst for martyrdom! But you have to wonder, don’t you, why God told him to flee while he’s telling other Republicans to run for president? Just imagine how differently the Bible would read if God had ordered all the old prophets to flee Israel.

Mysterious are the ways of the Lord.

Wiles’ guest, John Price, whom Right Wing Watch describes as “a onetime failed Republican Senate candidate from Indiana and author of “The End of America,” said the upcoming Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality shows that America “truly is the daughter of Babylon.”

“For Christians, there’s a really major troublesome thing coming and it’s going to be set loose on the country sometime between now and the end of June,” and that, Price said, is that “same-sex marriage [will become] the law of the land.”

Wiles agreed:

I honestly believe this is going to be the ruling that America crosses the line. What would a human father do with a son or daughter that had been blessed, had been a fairly good child most of his or her life and then suddenly just goes off the rails and becomes evil, wicked, rebellious, defiant? What would that father do? He would strip away that child’s blessings, and that’s exactly what our heavenly father is going to do to the United States of America. We’re about to get an old-fashioned paddling that is going to be extremely painful for this nation.

So Wiles and Price say God is going to “paddle” America and that “people who don’t want to be paddled” should “flee” the country.
Good riddance. Take your friends in the KKK with you.

The Supreme Court ruling will obviously have a serious effect on the 2016 presidential race, as Republican candidates may be forced to decide between what SCOTUS says is the law of the land and what their bigoted constituents want.

It is one thing for Alabama to defy the federal government. Presidential elections are not parochial affairs decided by a small clique of racist crackers. As the last two elections have shown, the American people are far more open minded and socially liberal than the GOP chooses to believe.

So you can be like Price, who claims that, “He’s a loving God and he would allow persecution for a good purpose.” Or you can accept that gays and lesbians are just folks like us who want the same things we want, or at the very least bow to the inevitable, like those 300 Republicans, and even if only out of self-interest, do the right thing.

But if you want to flee America instead, feel free. You won’t be missed.