It's not their faith telling them they are abortifacients, It is the US Government Department of Health and Human Services. HHS says the 2 IUDs in question and the morning/week after pills in question keep a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. Their faith says that life begins at conception, so being force to pay for something that keeps that life from implanting in the uterus is a violation of their religious belief.

The courts found that since this is a valid religious belief AND the government could provide the 4 questioned contraceptives through other means, that they could not force the owners of Hobby Lobby to violate their religious belief.

They were okay with the 1,196 that are on the market. It was just the 4, including two types of IUDs that were problematic.

The Hobby Lobby case is/was about individual owners of a company not losing their rights just because they formed a corporation for tax or liability purposes. It treats these individuals just like they were still a sole proprietorship or partnership. Simply put, the decision says that if you form a business, you do not give up any rights regardless of the form of that business.

That is really surprising. Do you have a citation to support that? I ask, because individuals before the Hobby Lobby case did not have a right to not hire LGBT, so the Hobby Lobby case has zero impact on the LGBT community. If something was discriminatory prior to Hobby Lobby for an individual to do, then it is still discriminatory post Hobby Lobby. Nothing has changed in that regard.

Again, the Hobby Lobby case had nothing to do with what you post. It was about not losing one's individual rights because of the way a business is organized. Of the 1,200 approved contraceptives on the market in the US, Hobby Lobby provides for 1,196 of them. How is that discrimination? To win it's case, over those four contraceptives, the government had to show there was no other reasonable way to provide them short of violating the owner's religious rights. That was not the case and the court said so. The Hobby Lobby case did not bestow religious freedoms on corporations. It did, however, keep the owners of those corporations, if fewer than five individuals from losing their religious freedoms.

In preceding passages in Deuteronomy where rape is definitely the subject, the author uses the Hebrew word "chazaq" which is missing from 22:28-29. As such, most scholars hold that the passage is not about rape but fornication. Basically, the passage you quote could be stated in today's terms that if you are caught sleeping with a woman, you must marry her.

I would concur. When people ask what I think of Obamacare, I say I don't like it. But that is only because I think it should have been a single payer plan (like Medicare). However, it is doubtful that would have passed.

I have a friend who was overseas in one of those "socialist" countries and she fell and broker her leg. She was operated on the next morning and she wasn't even a taxpayer there. While I have no doubt that there are some problems with socialized medicine, the reality is our system has problems, too. It's ironic, that in this country that claims to value equality, we have such an inequitable health care system. That's the problem with a health care system that is designed to profit on people being sick.

The IRS isn't necessarily saying Yorba can't function as a not-for-profit, but that it doesn't qualify as one under section 501c3. There are other forms of not for profits that may be more applicable. Personally, I would never have thought of Yorba or the other entities listed in the summary as charities, not for profits, yes, just not a charity. The two are not interchangeable terms.

And how does the Hobby Lobby case do this?

The courts did not rule that corporations have a religious belief, they recognized that the owners of the business do and cannot be compelled by the government to provide something that violates those beliefs. It makes no difference whether the business was a corporation or a sole proprietorship or a partnership.

The ruling is not about corporations having religious freedom. It is about the individuals who own the corporation having religious freedom and is pretty narrowly worded at that (not all corporations or even all private corporations, but only those private corporations with a few owners).

In the US, employers always have had the "right" to decide what insurance and other benefits they will or will not provide and at what cost to the employee. Hobby Lobby already provides birth control and the employee is free to choose whatever one(s) from the plan that their doctor prescribes. They have never included IUDs and the morning after or week after pills, so the employees are no worse off than they were prior to the ACA.

They are not directing the health care choices of their employees, they are simply stating that they are not going to pay for 4 products that the government states that it keeps a fertilized egg from implanting because their religious belief is that life begins at conception. The other 1,000 contraceptives are including in their plan, not those 4.

Of course being the only employee or even if there were a handful of employees, they wouldn't be subject to the ACA and income from S corps is taxed like a partnership on the total income earned, not just what the owners draw. S Corps provide limited liability to the owners, but that is about it.

Germany had a similar program in the late 1930s and 40s, singling out certain religious groups by making them wear a Star of David. I guess it is really true that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The case wasn't about corporations. It was about the owners of the corporations. And the court found that if you run your family business as a corporation you have the same rights as if you ran it as a sole proprietorship. Incorporating does not change an individual owners constitutional rights.

Can a not for profit be religious? Because both for profit and not for profit corporations must make a profit to stay in business. So, the only difference between the two is what is done with the profits. The courts don't care about heaven, they care about equal protection under the law. "Their" law, not God's.

Viagra has nothing to do with the argument. It is a drug that restores a lost functionality of the body. Insulin does, too, as does Boniva and others. As for religious groups not paying taxes, that is inaccurate. Religious groups do pay taxes unless they are a not for profit, which most, but not all are. Hobby Lobby, however, is neither a religious group nor a not for profit and pays all the taxes that every other business does. As for denying others their liberty, unless you are claiming that people have a constitutional right to have their employer provide birth control, what liberty has been denied. Specifically, Hobby Lobby's formulary for the health care plan has hundreds of forms of birth control. The case was about four specific products, like the morning after pill and IUDs.

See, you argue the Hobby Lobby case for them. If they want to stick to their religious beliefs, then they must give up a protection under the law that is available to those without those beliefs. Effectively, your solution says to either chose your faith or chose the protection under the law. The SCOTUS said that one does not lose their individual rights just because of the legal form in which they chose to run their business.