Satanists want Hobby Lobby-style religious exemption from anti-choice counseling laws

[rug]

The Satanic Temple wants the government to respect the Dark Lord when it comes to accessing abortion care

Monday, Jul 28, 2014 12:08 PM EDT
Katie McDonough

Remember how satanists are building a statue of a 19th century goat-man occult symbol to place outside the Oklahoma State Capitol because there is already a Ten Commandments monument on display? Well, those same satanists are now using the Supreme Court’s sweeping Hobby Lobby decision to challenge coercive mandatory counseling laws by requesting a religious exemption for satanists (and non-satanists).

“While we feel we have a strong case for an exemption regardless of the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court has decided that religious beliefs are so sacrosanct that they can even trump scientific fact,” Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucian Greaves said in a Monday statement. ”This was made clear when they allowed Hobby Lobby to claim certain contraceptives were abortifacients, when in fact they are not. Because of the respect the Court has given to religious beliefs, and the fact that our our beliefs are based on best available knowledge, we expect that our belief in the illegitimacy of state­ mandated ‘informational’ material is enough to exempt us, and those who hold our beliefs, from having to receive them.”

The claim here is not quite as apples-to-apples as the Ten Commandments/goat-man hybrid statue, but you can easily follow their thinking. The Hobby Lobby decision granted 90 percent of the corporations in the United States a kind of religious personhood under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. So now the government can’t require Hobby Lobby or any corporation to include comprehensive contraceptive coverage in its employer health plan if that coverage violates the corporation’s religious beliefs.

Because medicine and scientific fact are the tenets of satanists’ faith, then medically inaccurate and coercive counseling laws present a substantial burden, according to Greaves. This is pretty much what Ruth Bader Ginsburg was talking about in her dissent when she said the justices had “ventured into a minefield.” It just so happens that these are satanists making a faith claim under the legal precedent, and not, you know, a company that produces soy milk and hates birth control. But it’s the same idea.

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/28/satanists_want_hobby_lobby_style_religious_exemption_from_anti_choice_counseling_law/

Too bad this is from Lucian Greaves. I'd like to see this argument actually go to court but he's more into stunts than actually testing it.

[longship]

1. Won't this play into Fundie Christian narrative?

I'd rather the Pastafarians take this one on. After all, the fundamentalists are already saying that birth control is from the devil.

From my perspective, this is a lose-lose. Certainly they will not understand the irony of the Satanist Church.

[rug]

3. It all depends on how he handles it.

Right now, it looks like this is as far as he's going:

The Satanic Temple has provided a pre-written letter that people can present to their doctors in an attempt to be exempted from mandatory counseling. So while doctors in South Dakota and elsewhere in the country read patients their state-mandated script, patients can now come back with a satan-mandated rebuttal:

I regard any information required by state statute to be communicated or offered to me as a precondition for an abortion (separate and apart from any other medical procedure) is based on politics and not science (“Political Information”). I regard Political Information as a state sanctioned attempt to discourage abortion by compelling my consideration of the current and future condition of my fetal or embryonic tissue separate and apart from my body. I do not regard Political Information to be scientifically true or accurate or even relevant to my medical decisions. The communication of Political Information to me imposes an unwanted and substantial burden on my religious beliefs.

Clowns are not the best bearers of the message.

[longship]

6. Indeed, re clowns. Both the so-called Satanists and the Pastafarians.

But at least the Pastafarians could arguably be satire and not play into the hand of the fundie Christian narrative.

Cui bono?

[vi5]

7. We're in this mess in the first place because

We've spent so much time and cowering and worrying whether the fundies feelings will be hurt or whether it will play into their absurd narratives and just in general giving way too much leeway for them to run roughshod over religious freedom and the constitution. We've spent so much time over the past 20-30 years trying to give an inch of respect and they've instead tried to grab miles of constitutional abuse.

Yes, ideally this should be some Democratic party/liberal/progressive affilliated organization doing it. But obviously they are all too cowardly to do so. So.....I'll take whoever has the balls to stand up to these facists.

[AtheistCrusader]

2. Proving the principle behind the idea.

So easy to do.

[rug]

4. That is always the strongest argument as well.

[AtheistCrusader]

5. I think so.