Like many people in our country, I am reeling from yesterday's Supreme Court decision to treat Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood as private individuals with the right to erroneously withhold affordable access to contraception from their employees based on their (HL and CW's) religious beliefs. I say erroneously because their claim that said contraceptives cause abortions is patently false, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Yet these facts are apparently not pertinent to the case, nor is the fact that the very definition of religious freedom is that I don't have the right to impose my religion on you, nor do you have the right to impose yours on me.
I suppose should not have been surprised when this maddeningly conservative Court moved in this direction. Two weeks ago, I was scheduled to go to Albany, along with another clergy colleague and a young woman in my congregation who cares deeply about these issues, to speak with our respective senators about the Women's Equality Act. The WEA is a 10 point plan proposed by NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo in his 2013 State of the State Address that covers a wide variety of issues vital to women, among them reproductive rights. Even though this Act is overwhelming popular in statewide polls, it has struggled in the state legislature. It recently passed the assembly, and we had hopes that it might get through the senate, but here's the rub: our senators refused to meet with us. There were clergy and people of faith coming from all over the state on Wednesday, June 18th to speak with our senators and their staffers, and they unilaterally refused to see us. They stated they already had heard from their constituents and knew how they were going to vote. They then proceeded to vote separately the Monday before our previously scheduled meetings on three of the points but to ignore the rest. So apparently religious freedom is only important if you are a conservative Christian in this state and in this country - and it is the freedom to impose your very narrow and particular brand of Christianity on others.
The Jesus I follow cared deeply about women, about their hearts, and minds, and bodies. He healed women dealing with gynecological problems and brought women into the fold who were not of his Jewish faith. But he never forced anyone to follow him, to believe in him, to live by his rules. Rather he gave people the information they needed to make a decision, and then allowed them the free will to decide. How a bunch of unelected old white men (that's right: not one female on the Court voted in favor of this 5-4 decision - Justice Breyer was the only male dissenting) can decide for women (and undeniably financially challenged women if they're working for Hobby Lobby, although it remains to be seen how far-reaching this decision will be) what type of contraception they may use is inconceivable, to steal a pun from my former seminary classmate who wrote an article on this topic for the Huffington Post.
All I can hope is that the fight against such rulings is swift and strong, and that we do not lose heart in the midst of it. How the country I love and have been blessed to live in and minister in can head down such a treacherous path is a mystery to me.
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