The Left’s Hobby Lobby hobby horse

Political guru and self-described “media hack” Greg Gutfeld said it best when he said, “In the absence of grip, rage becomes the recipe.” And in the fallout caused by the historic ruling that was the Hobby Lobby decision before the Supreme Court, this certainly fits the bill. Perhaps no other story in recent history has caused such divisiveness, such vitriol, or worse-such spin to emanate from both sides.

And that’s exactly what’s happened. Since the Supreme Court released its ruling on June 30, both ends of the political sphere have been cramming the airwaves with their side’s agenda—with neither of them bothering to give the American people the common courtesy of even an inkling of truth as to what really happened.

The right drums on and on about how this was such a great victory for religious freedom and justice here in America because the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, while the left has gone into a full-blown panic. Seriously, I don’t think there’s enough licensed therapists in the whole of the United States to clean up the emotional distress this has caused the political left. A currently sitting federal judge wrote a blog insisting the Supreme Court should ‘stfu.’ But what were we to expect from the same individuals who insisted conservatives accept the virtues and wisdom of the Supreme Court after it first upheld the whole of ObamaCare?

The liberal “Doom and Gloom Apocalypse” train stops begin at the town of The Just Plain Weird and extend all the way into the Shameful. One example of the sad and weird can be found in C.J. Werleman’s piece for Salon.com, when he wrote that the Court’s Hobby Lobby decision was all a part of the Christian Right’s grand plot to end whatever democracy is left in America and replace it with a “corporate theocracy.” But on a scale of ridiculous, it gets even worse than this. Much worse, in fact. In fact, it gets down to the level of “Pointlessly Absurd and Shameful” (and yes, I just made that level up, because it’s that bad).

NOW (The National Organization for Women) released what it calls the “Dirty 100”—organizations who have filed lawsuits against this administration and its contraception mandate. Apparently, NOW, in their endless pursuit for women’s rights and as good, faithful soldiers in the so-called “War on Women” listed the Little Sisters of the Poor as one of the evil and vile entities that must be dealt with. But who are the Little Sisters of the Poor? As it turns out, they are a group of Catholic sisters who take vows to tend to the needs of the elderly poor. Yes, that’s right, let that hypocrisy sink in for just a moment. If you ever doubted this wasn’t about the desire of the left to force their control upon everyone else, you just found all the proof you needed. Because after all, there’s nothing that says “War on Women” like the National Organization for Women publicly shaming a group of women who are asking to be freed from being required to purchase a contraceptive they’d obviously never need anyway, right?

And there’s one more observation that’s come to light in the wake of the left’s sacrificing of their Hobby Lobby Hobby Horse that needs to be made. While the progressives demand the federal minimum wage be raised to a minimum of $15 an hour, there is one corporation in all of America that has a starting hourly salary of over $14 an hour for all full-time employees. Does anyone dare to guess the name of that evil corporation? It’s not their beloved Starbucks. That’s right, it’s Hobby Lobby. They had an employer already paying them the starting salary they were asking the rest of America to come up to, one who was already providing health benefits that included completely free contraceptive coverage for all save four methods that the employers felt strongly about, and yet they still couldn’t be happy. Which tells me that the progressives will never really be satisfied, will they?

So what’s the common sense approach to all of this for the rest of us? It’s surprisingly simple.

Imagine you own a company and one of your employers comes to you and asks you to go buy him some heroine. Would you be OK with that? Chances are, none of us would be because we have a conscientious objection to doing so, and we’d tell him as much. But imagine, what would you say if he responded by saying, “It’s OK, boss, just take the money out of your right pocket and put it into your left, and pay for it out of your right pocket. Then it won’t really be you paying for it!” What if he gave you the advice of, “Just take it out of your business account rather than your personal bank account! But you can’t deny me my right!” How long would this person be in your employ? Not long, I suppose.

The Hobby Lobby case is no different than that which I outlined above. The employer is Hobby Lobby who has a conscientious objection to the purchase of a product. The right pocket is Hobby Lobby’s business account, while the left pocket is the health insurance plans that Hobby Lobby is still responsible by Federal law to pay for (thus, switching money from one pocket to the other). Yet, there’s a difference between my example and the actual Hobby Lobby case, and that is this:

Has anyone actually heard a single Hobby Lobby employee complain? I mean, I know we’ve heard a lot from the far left groups who think they speak for the Hobby Lobby employees, but has anyone heard from even one Hobby Lobby employee?

…Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?

Mike Swims is a political columnist and podcast host. He is also the preacher of the Canal Heights church of Christ in Demopolis. His column on politics and current events appears weekly for The West Alabama Watchman.