Secular and Religious Leftists Gang Up on Hobby Lobby

Faithful America, a creation of the National Council of Churches, has joined forces with a far left feminist organization called UltraViolet (led by former MoveOn.org activist Nita Chaudhary) to pressure Christian-led business Hobby Lobby to give up its quest to maintain its ethical standards. CharismaNews offers the details:

Christian activists are demanding Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. drop its lawsuit opposing the Health and Human Services “preventive services” mandate.

The Rev. Lance Schmitz, pastor of the Capitol Hill Church of the Nazarene in Oklahoma City, Okla., was turned away from Hobby Lobby’s headquarters Thursday when he attempted to deliver a petition.

The pastor said more than 80,000 people had signed copies of a petition circulated nationwide by the online Christian group Faithful America, and women’s rights group UltraViolet.

Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit, filed earlier this month in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, seeks protection from Obamacare’s “preventive services” mandate, which forces businesses to provide the “morning-after” and “week-after” pills—without co-pay—in their health insurance plans. If Hobby Lobby failed to comply with this mandate, it would face fines up to $1.3 million per day.

So, to summarize: Hobby Lobby is run by Christians who don’t believe in paying for abortifacient-type contraception. Faithful America and UltraViolet believe that Christians have no right to dissent from the reigning sexual and contraceptive orthodoxy which they represent, think that delivering petitions from their fellow orthodox will persuade Hobby Lobby to give up its rights.

Here’s Hobby Lobby’s side:

“By being required to make a choice between sacrificing our faith or paying millions of dollars in fines, we essentially must choose which poison pill to swallow,” explained David Green, founder and CEO of the arts and craft store company. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

Kyle Duncan, chief counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty—the nonprofit, public-interest law firm representing the company—was reported by the Associated Press as saying the Green family respects the religious convictions of others, “including those who do not agree with them.”

“All they are asking is for the government to give them the same respect by not forcing them to violate their religious beliefs,” he said.

In a press statement earlier this month, Duncan said the Green family is not against contraceptives—and will continue to cover birth control for their employees—but they are against abortion-inducing drugs.

The petitioners, on the other hand, take the usual hysterical approach, which is that Hobby Lobby wants to return women to the Middle Ages:

“It’s a woman’s personal decision on what kind of birth control to use,” said Cat Barr, campaign director for UltraViolet. “Hobby Lobby is out of touch with mainstream Americans. It’s not their role to be dictating medical decisions.”

Because if Hobby Lobby doesn’t pay for contraception, women won’t be able to get it, because it isn’t available without a prescription and costs thousands of dollars a month to…oh, wait.

Faithful America’s spokesman, Michael Sharrard, said a large part of the group’s efforts “is to try to counter extremists” and that it represents the “mainstream majority,” AP reports.

Because it is the mainstream position that all women should have free access to any and all types of contraception…oh, wait.

The petitions accuse the Green family of using their faith as an excuse to obstruct the reform of health care and deny women access to birth control. The signatories have vowed not to stop at the craft store until it dismisses the lawsuit.

Because women are such children that they are incapable of buying inexpensive contraception for themselves despite its universal accessibility. For Hobby Lobby to “deny women access to birth control” would essentially mean they would have to arrange for the closure of every pharmacy in America. This kind of talk, which seeks to make every employer in America serve the culture of contraception and death, is utterly contrary to any notion of freedom. That an allegedly Christian organization such as Faithful America would seek to have fellow believers violate their consciences in the service of that culture says much about how in thrall to the world so much of the religious left has become.