LGBT community already feeling the impact of religious exemption

[rug]

Protesters outside the Supreme Court following the Hobby Lobby decision in Washington, June 30, 2014. The Obama administration, reeling from back-to-back blows from the Supreme Court this week, is now weighing options that would provide contraceptive coverage to thousands of women who are about to lose it because of their employers' religious objections. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

By Cece Cox/LGBTQ Insider
[e-mail]
10:25 am on July 14, 2014 |

Oregon is a long way from the white-columned Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., but a transgender student at a Christian university there is feeling the sting of his school’s successful claim of a religious exemption, just as religious exemption cases are in the limelight after the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores.

LGBTQ advocates have been on high alert before and since the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hobby Lobby. The court ruled that closely held, for-profit corporations may invoke religious liberty to avoid compliance with the contraception coverage mandate in the president’s 2010 health-care reform law.

Access to affordable contraception is a crucial issue for lesbian and bisexual women and the transgender community. Beyond that immediate impact of the ruling, the Court’s decision is expected to add to the flurry of activity by self-proclaimed religious organizations seeking to shut down equal rights laws and initiatives that would afford LGBT persons the same protections that others enjoy in employment, housing, public accommodations and other settings.

One doesn’t have to look far to find the insidious results of discrimination against LGBTQ persons by religious institutions. On July 10, Jayce, a transgender male student was denied on-campus housing by George Fox, a Christian university in Oregon. According to the student’s attorney, the university requested a religious exemption to the Title IX regulations regarding housing, restrooms and athletics as they apply to transgender students. PQ reports the Department of Education closed the student’s legal complaint, thereby granting the university a religious exemption.

http://lgbtqblog.dallasnews.com/2014/07/lgbt-community-already-feeling-the-impact-of-religious-exemption.html/

http://www.pqmonthly.com/breaking-department-education-grants-george-fox-religious-exemption-says-college-can-refuse-trans-students-campus-housing/20071

[Swede Atlanta]

1. As Ginsburg wrote in her dissenting opinion......

HL has created a legal precedent that cannot be contained simply because the 5 male Catholic justices said it was contained.

Once you create the legal notion that businesses (doesn't matter what form they take - e.g. corporation, LLC, LLP, etc.) have religious beliefs and those beliefs create a right to not comply with a valid law, just because you say this is limited to closely-held companies (majority of US businesses fit that description) and only to the contraception mandate doesn't mean the notion isn't otherwise applicable.

HL was with respect to the Religious something or another Restoration Act that requires the government to use the least restrictive/coercive means possible to achieve the government's interests when they conflict with religious liberties.

What isn't to say that a JW that opposes blood transfusions comes next and says I don't want to pay for that coverage for my employees. Let's see, there is a less coercive method in ensuring the insured has coverage for a transfusion if he/she needs one. The government can just pay for it or force the insurance company to pay for it uncompensated.

This is where their argument falls apart. HL is going to pay for the contraceptives for their female employees. It won't be listed as part of what they cover but, unless the government compensates the insurance company, the insurance company will simply raise its premiums on HL to cover it. Or likely spread that cost out across all of their customers.

I for one wouldn't want to attend a Christian university that knowingly doesn't like LGBTQ persons. But that is beside the point here.

Mark my word, religious nut cases will come crawling out from under rocks asserting their opposition to everything from gay persons to hangnails.

[rug]

2. It began with endowing inanimate corporations with speech rights in Citizens United.

[cbayer]

4. This is correct. They have opened a can of worms that is going to get

worse and worse.

Can they reverse themselves? Or do we have to wait for a new court.

[msongs]

3. dear customers your religion violates my sincerely held religious beliefs so no service for you! nt