Sincerely-Held Beliefs for Everybody!
By The discussion about the Hobby Lobby ruling has me wondering if the court has all but come out and said that the beliefs of believers carry more weight more than non-believers. How does the sincerely-held belief nonsense not quickly becomes a slippery slope? It almost has to in order for the ruling to be fair. It is my sincerely-held belief that people like the Greens are humongous assholes. If they were, say, working for me, it is my sincerely-held belief that I should be able to fire them simply because they are enormous assholes and because they support–in their private time–causes I don’t support. (I don’t really believe this because, unlikes the Greens, I am not an enormous asshole.) Now, I am not a person of faith. What informs this opinion is just my sincerely-held belief. But exactly how are my sincerely-held beliefs any less important than the sincerely-held beliefs that are informed by mythology? The way I see it, if religious people get to skirt the laws, everybody gets to skirt the laws. I’m looking forward to that!
The following is a encore presentation of a post I wrote awhile back on this very subject:
You may not believe this, but I am a job creator. I pay–no kidding–a Canadian art student to cut things out of digital photos for me. Now this Canadian art student is not like the ubiquitous Canadian girlfriend you may have heard about–no. She is a real person whom I pay to do a service for me because I have back issues. Unfortunately we will be parting ways because I don’t want to pay for her allergy medication.
The way I see it, if my employee doesn’t want to suffer from allergies she should stuff a couple aspirin up her nose. At the very least she should keep her damn nostrils shut. Because I’m not going to pay for her slutty nose to remain histamine-free. It’s against my religion to do so.
See, I have deeply-held religious beliefs that prevent me from covering allergy medications for my
employee. Sure, I just started my religion 15 minutes ago, and I worship a plump, stuffed, green dragon named “Geoffrey” that I may or may not have pulled from my son’s toy cubby. But this is my religion and it means something to me; it’s been the guiding force in my life for minutes now. And I’m not going to go against the word of Geoffrey because just because Obummer has gotten it in his head that employees deserve comprehensive preventative care. Canadian student’s rights to healthcare end where the stuffed dragon’s arbitrary rules begin.
Listen, it’s no fun for me, either. I can no longer eat dragonfly sandwiches on Friday. And insect-less Fridays are no fun for anybody. But my job is not to question; my job is to obey the word of Geoffrey. The stuffed dragon.
OK, I could continue this for quite some time–I have lots of Geoffrey material. But I kinda want to wrap this up and get to my point. And my point is this: predicating things as important as healthcare coverage on the fickle and arbitrarily-enforced rules of an imaginary character is a recipe for disaster.
I bring this up because in one of Scott’s previous threads beloved commenter, David M. Nieporent, said that in order for an employee to, say, arbitrarily make up rules according to a new religion, one would have to perjure herself. And that got me wondering: How would one go about proving perjury in such cases? What, exactly, could stop me from starting my own religion right this second? All religions had a beginning. Mormonism–aside from being batcrap crazy–is incredibly new so far as religions go. Scientology–in addition to being a creepy cult–is newer still. All religions have a beginning. And, yeah, they’re all weird. And they seem especially weird when they’re new. So I fail to see how Geoffreyism is any less meaningful or real than any other religion. But I look forward to people attempting to prove that it is.
