(Credit: specialoperations)
Happy 66th birthday to Al Gore! Here are some of the stories we’re reading on a gloomy Monday in NYC…
Morning Reads: 2016 Could Offer Bush V. Clinton; The Hobby Lobby Of Union-Busting?
JOY-ANN REID, MSNBC HOST: However, a business, a corporation you form, is separate from yourself, meaning that if your corporation, for instance, were to violate one of the Ten Commandments, if it were to covet another corporation’s products or if it was to steal another corporation’s patent, it could not suffer the wrath of God, right? So how is it possible for a corporation to somehow violate the religious tenants of its faith if it is not a person and doesn’t have a soul?
LORI WINDHAM, BECKET FUND FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: Well, you know, I think that really gets into a theological family. The Green family believes that they are going to be responsible to God and that they have to answer to God for the things that they do through their family businesses. And so for them, it’s not as simple as saying, ‘Oh, well, the corporation’s doing it, it’s okay. And I think that many Americans would really pull back from the idea that, hey, if I’m just doing this as part of a corporation, if I’m just doing this as part of my job, I don’t have any moral agency here. I think that’s a very difficult argument to make.
REID: Except that Christians who own businesses, let’s say lay people off around Christmastime, right? People do things all the time, that they may personally find morally sort of questionable, but they do them for the business. People lay people off at christmastime.
WINDHAM: I think that what we want to encourage here in the U.S. is people who are willing to have social consciences and who are willing to consider their beliefs in the way they run their business. That’s what the Green family has done. They have raised their minimum wage, every year for the last five years. They’re now nearly double the federal minimum wage, because they said, ‘You know what, that’s the right thing to do.’ I think that’s the kind of behavior we want to encourage rather than discourage.
REID: Let me ask you about another business that thinks that the federal minimum wage is usury and they don’t want to comply with federal minimum wage laws because it violates their religious tenants. Or what if you had another business whose owners believe that women’s place is in the home, so therefore they don’t feel they should be compelled to consider women for employment?
WINDHAM: You know, we’ve heard all of these wild hypotheticals and I think Congress has already answered that with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. What they’ve said is, when there’s a compelling government reason, like protecting the minimum wage or stopping discrimination or protecting life, that the government can win in those cases.
The question isn’t who gets to exercise the rights. The question is, how strong is the government’s interests? Here, the government’s interest is really weak, because they have already exempted plans covering tens of millions of Americans from this same mandate. So how can they exempt so many millions of plans on one hand and yet fine the green family on the other?
