Genius Of The Day – Cyndi Lauper On Hobby Lobby

“The Hobby Lobby decision makes clear that this isn’t an argument about religious liberties—it’s a rejection of women’s rights across the board.”

There has been tens of  thousands of words already written about the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, which allowed them to block insurance coverage of contraception for female employees because of the owners' religious objections. Lots of voices pro and con.

No one, however, has voiced their objections to this decision better than singer Cyndi Lauper. In an article published July 3rd for the Daily Beast, she wrote:

In the 1970s, I took part in a demonstration in Central Park during the height of the women's liberation movement. ­I’d like to think we’ve come a long way since then, but this week’s decision from the Supreme Court sends the clear message that too many employers and Supreme Court Justices still regard women as second-class citizens.

With one ruling handed down this week, five men in black robes decided that we should return to policies of the 1950s and ask our bosses’ permission to receive basic preventive health care.

It doesn’t matter what women choose to do with the opportunities provided by birth control—what matters is that women are allowed to make these choices for ourselves. Yet here we are in 2014, still arguing over our right to have access to this important preventive care.

The decision handed down this week makes clear that this isn’t an argument about religious liberties.  Rather, it is a rejection of women’s rights across the board, hidden within an argument that our most basic health care is “controversial.” 

The subject of birth control should be far from controversial. To many women, the only thing controversial about it is that we are still fighting this battle.

Four years after the high court ruled that corporations have free speech rights in its controversial Citizens United decision, the decision gives broad new privileges to corporations, granting them religious rights for the first time.

The court's Monday ruling in Hobby Lobby takes corporate personhood to a whole new level.

Justice Antonin Scalia likes to portray himself as a proud defender of the US Constitution and especially in terms of original intent. I wonder, on the eve of Independence Day in the USA, if Scalia, despite his claims of being an originalist, might be willing to change the US Constitution's first words from “We the People” to “We the Corporations”?  That certainly appears to be the way this Supreme Court is headed. The corporations will follow. Will the people?

Thanks for visiting.