Replies to post #224504 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

And I heard today somewhere on the tv, that's what they did in 2000 with bush vs gore. They put that exact same thing in about 'that ruling could NEVER ever be applied again to any other election, etc. .' And that is what they did today, they stated that this ruling would not and could not be applied to any other corp. or entity .... or however, they ruled it ... F6 would know ..... and all this is my words .. not the experts I heard on the tube today ... ;)

and after scotus gave bush the election .. bush put in roberts ... .. I'll tell you, dems do not think ahead AND they don't get nasty ... they will have to begin NOW or get out of town!

[fuagf]

to link .. The Hobby Lobby Case Shows Why Private Companies Shouldn't Provide Insurance. The Government Should
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=103868123

also .. Should Your Boss Play Doctor?
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95471365

and linked at the bottom of that one

EZ2 .. Is Employer-Based Health Insurance Worth Saving? [ NO! ]
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=73143855
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=92207205

[Susie924]

Join the dissent

https://secure.ppaction.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=18071&s_src=SCOTUSDecisions_0614_c3_c3web&s_subsrc=3NALD1412W1N1V

[fuagf]

red lights exist in the belief of a common good .. the common belief of a large majority of Americans is that insurance should
cover all types of contraception .. the Supreme Court decision was not about belief, but about one belief only, one religious belief ..

In Hobby Lobby Case, the Supreme Court Chooses Religion Over Science .. with links ..

Five justices ignore science in their ruling that companies are not required to provide contraception under Obamacare.

—By Erika Eichelberger and Molly Redden | Mon Jun. 30, 2014 12:09 PM EDT


A protester in front of the US Supreme Court Miguel Juarez Lugo/ZUMA

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that most private companies are not required to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees, as mandated by Obamacare. Four years after the high court ruled that corporations have free speech rights in its controversial Citizens United decision, the decision gives broad new privileges to corporations, granting them religious rights for the first time.

More MoJo coverage of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision.

Hobby Lobby's Hypocrisy: The Company's Retirement Plan Invests in Contraception Manufacturers
The 8 Best Lines From Ginsburg's Dissent
Why the Decision Is the New Bush v. Gore
How Obama Can Make Sure Hobby Lobby's Female Employees Are Covered
Hobby Lobby Funded Disgraced Fundamentalist Christian Leader Accused of Harassing Dozens of Women

The decision in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., the most closely-watched case of the year, says that certain companies—those with more than half of their stock owned by fewer than five people—do not have to adhere to the Obamacare mandate that employee insurance plans cover birth control, if the owners have a religious objection. This 5-4 ruling applies to about 90 percent of all American businesses, and 52 percent of America's workforce.

The majority decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, held that if Hobby Lobby's owners believe that the contraceptives at issue cause abortions, the mandate is a burden on their religious beliefs: "[W]e must decide whether the challenged…regulations substantially burden the exercise of religion, and we hold that they do," Alito wrote. "The owners of the businesses have religious objections to abortion, and according to their religious beliefs the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients."

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Alito and the four other conservative justices on the court were essentially overruling not just an Obamacare regulation, but science. According to the Food and Drug Administration, all four of the contraceptive methods Hobby Lobby objects to—Plan B, Ella, and two intrauterine devices—do not prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg into the uterus, which the owners of Hobby Lobby consider abortion. Instead, these methods prevent fertilization.

Yet this scientific determination did not guide the five justices. In his opinion, Alito contends that these four contraception methods "may have the effect of preventing an already fertilized egg from developing any further by inhibiting its attachment to the uterus." He does not cite any science to back this up. Instead, in a footnote, Alito concedes that Hobby Lobby's religious-based assertions are contradicted by science-based federal regulations: "The owners of the companies involved in these cases and others who believe that life begins at conception regard these four methods as causing abortions, but federal regulations, which define pregnancy as beginning at implantation, do not so classify them." Still, he and the other conservative justices are saying that in a conflict between a religious view and scientific research, religion wins.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a stinging dissent, called the majority opinion a "decision of startling breadth."

The exemption from Obamacare's contraception mandate does not apply to other types of medical procedures that might draw religious objections, including blood transfusions or vaccinations. The majority ruled that the government can pay for contraception for women whose employers object, noting that the government already does so in cases involving religious institutions and religiously-affiliated nonprofits.

Here's more background on the case:

What did Hobby Lobby argue is unconstitutional about Obamacare? Hobby Lobby, a private, for-profit chain of arts and crafts stores, is owned by the billionaire Green family, who are evangelical Christians. The Greens say they have a moral objection to 4 of the 20 FDA-approved birth control methods covered by Obamacare. They believe these contraceptives cause abortions (even though they don't), and they requested the government grant Hobby Lobby a religious exemption to Obamacare's requirement that company insurance plans fully cover contraception.

(The ruling in the Hobby Lobby case was issued jointly with a similar case called Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, which was brought by a private cabinet-making company that wants to be exempt from covering Plan B and Ella, but not IUDs. Dozens of companies claim religious objections to covering birth control.)

What exactly did the Supreme Court have to decide? Under a 1993 law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Americans are not required to follow federal laws that "substantially burden religious exercise," unless the government has a "compelling…interest" at stake that outweighs that individual burden.

In 2012, Hobby Lobby sued Kathleen Sebelius, then the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), arguing that Obamacare's contraception mandate placed a substantial burden on the firm because if the company chooses not to cover the birth control methods it finds objectionable, then it would have to pay a penalty of $100 per per day for each of its 13,000 employees.

The Supreme Court had to decide whether the RFRA applies not only to people but to private commercial enterprises, a determination no court has ever made. And if Hobby Lobby was significantly burdened by the contraception mandate.

This corporate personhood thing sounds familiar. Does this case have anything to do with Citizens United? In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporate political spending is speech protected by the First Amendment. This decision opened the door to the legal argument that corporations may also have religious rights under the Constitution. The court's Monday ruling in Hobby Lobby takes corporate personhood to a whole new level.

How does this affect me? A pro-Hobby Lobby ruling could have endangered not only Obamacare, but labor rights, gay rights, and women's rights. Here's what actually happened:

1. Access to contraception: Women's health advocates worried that a pro-Hobby Lobby ruling would have jeopardized access to affordable birth control for millions of women who work at private companies with religious owners, forcing those women purchase certain contraception on their own. But since the court noted that the government can provide a workaround, there may end up being no gap in birth control coverage.

2. Access to other health benefits under Obamacare: The ruling could have endangered other provisions of the health care law. A company run by Jehovah's Witnesses could have objected to covering blood transfusions. A business helmed by devout Christian Scientists might not want to cover vaccinations. "Scientology-believing employers could insist on noncoverage of its nemesis, psychiatry," the Reverend Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told Forbes. And so on. But Alito made clear that the exemption granted in Monday's decision applies only to contraception.

3. Workers' rights: Observers worried that if the religion of a private company's owner could dictate the health plans offered, other companies would have been free to argue they have the right to cite religious views of the owners and fire an employee for being single and pregnant or for having an abortion. Corporations with fundamentalist owners of any religion might object to paying women as much as men. Fundamentalist Muslim-owned companies could force female employees to wear burkas. Private companies might be able to legally deny employment to LGBT people. But the Supreme Court made clear that employers should not be able to use this decision to discriminate under the guise of religion.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/supreme-court-hobby-lobby-decision

[fuagf]

Sandra Fluke: The Hobby Lobby case is an attack on women

How is birth control different from blood transfusions and vaccines? It’s not

By Sandra Fluke June 30

Sandra Fluke is a social justice attorney who testified before Congress in 2012 about the importance of contraception coverage in health insurance. She is currently running for the California State Senate.


Pro-life activists outside the Supreme Court. (EPA/JIM LO SCALZO)

Today, the Supreme Court ruled in the nationally followed Hobby Lobby case. The for-profit corporations that brought these cases to the Supreme Court—a craft store and a cabinet manufacturer—argued that the corporations’ religious convictions should excuse them from compensating their employees through the comprehensive health insurance required by law. Specifically, these private employers sought to exclude insurance coverage of several forms of birth control because, contrary to medical and scientific evidence, the corporations’ owners believe some birth control causes abortions.

The Affordable Care Act already includes special arrangements for houses of worship and religious non-profits, like schools and hospitals. Houses of worship are completely exempted. Employees of religious non-profits receive their birth control coverage directly from their insurance company. The non-profit employer is not required to pay or be involved in any way.

Today’s cases weren’t about those types of religious organizations. They were about privately owned, closely held, for-profit corporations. Today, the Court ruled that such corporations have religious rights under federal statute, just as individuals do. Corporations are not people. Corporations cannot have religious views. And this decision sends us in a dangerous direction.

VIDEO

Some imagine closely held corporations as family-run small business. Actually, closely held corporations make up more than 90 percent .. http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/encyclopedia/Clo-Con/Closely-Held-Corporations.html .. of the businesses in this country. They employ 52 percent of the labor force .. http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/4049/Governance%20Problems%20in%20Closely%20Held%20Corporations.pdf , and the 224 largest closely held corporations had combined revenues of $1.6 trillion .. http://www.forbes.com/largest-private-companies/ .. in 2013. Some of these companies include Dell, Toys ‘R’ Us, Heinz, Dole Foods, Petco, Stater Bros and yes, even Koch Industries. Under today’s decision, employees (and their dependents) at all of those corporations may lose their insurance coverage of birth control if their employers choose to deny it.

The court framed its decision as one of limited scope, applying it only to the contraception requirement and basing it upon a specific federal statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, rather than the First Amendment. However, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg convincingly demonstrates in her dissent, this decision opens the door for future cases with numerous far-reaching implications. As the court adds to its precedent, it increases the likelihood of corporations of all kinds being granted additional rights previously reserved only for individuals.

In the area of health care alone, the court’s decision allows companies to deny coverage of numerous health-care services. The majority opinion barely addresses this concern. Why is birth control—an uncontroversial form of care used by an astonishing number of women—different from blood transfusions and vaccines, which many individuals have religious objections to? The fact is, it’s not. This case sets a dangerous precedent and can be used in the future to go far past birth control.

The court cited the government’s ability to meet women’s need for affordable access to contraception in other ways, specifically pointing to government provision of birth control as an option. But in the current reproductive rights environment, that will never happen. Opponents of reproductive rights are trying to limit access to comprehensive women’s health care from all directions. At the federal level, they have attempted to defund Title X, which provides funding for family planning for our poorest sisters in community clinics. At the state level, in Texas for example, there are attacks on government money for contraception and clinics that offer abortion care. There is a movement to prohibit government support not only for abortion services—which, with a few exceptions, has existed for three decades—but also for emergency contraception and certain forms of birth control. Even a woman’s ability to pay for her own coverage is under attack: Some states’ exchanges and the federal exchange are prohibited from providing insurance that covers abortion care.

In sum, the anti-choice movement wants to limit not just affordable access, but all access to abortion and birth control, whether it is backed by the government, by employers, or purchased by private citizens. It is an attack at all levels, and today’s decision is just another success in these efforts.

The task now is to determine how best to meet the reproductive health-care needs of millions of women who could be affected by this decision. The court says that the White House could expand the program for employees of religiously-affiliated non-profits to these employees as well. That won’t undo the long-term damage that the court has begun today, but it will go a long way in ensuring healthcare access for millions of women. The Obama administration should act.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/30/sandra-fluke-the-hobby-lobby-case-is-an-attack-on-women/

See also:

14 More Companies That Likely Will Deny Employees Birth Control
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=103993820

The 8 Best Lines From Ginsburg's Dissent on the Hobby Lobby Contraception Decision
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=103919941

[fuagf]

The Hobby Lobby ruling Disingenuous

Jul 2nd 2014, 18:01 by S.M. | SAN DIEGO



HOW broad is the ruling .. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf .. in Burwell v Hobby Lobby? To listen to Justice Samuel Alito, author of the majority opinion, letting some religious employers off the hook for providing no-cost birth control to their employees is quite modest. The decision applies only to “closely-held” corporations, he wrote, and it is “concerned solely with the contraceptive mandate”:

"Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer’s religious beliefs. Other coverage requirements, such as immunizations, may be supported by different interests (for example, the need to combat the spread of infectious diseases) and may involve different arguments about the least restrictive means of providing them."

Justice Alito is a smart guy, so the weak and disingenuous arguments he strings together in this section of his opinion are particularly troubling. The problem goes well beyond the opinion’s misleading implication that “closely-held” companies are a narrow slice of the American business world: at least half of American workers .. http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/4049/Governance%20Problems%20in%20Closely%20Held%20Corporations.pdf .. are employed by such corporations.

Let’s look at the word “necessarily” and the work it does in the first sentence. Don’t read our ruling to accommodate every conceivable religious objection to insurance-coverage mandates, Justice Alito means to say. We are not opening the door to Jehovah’s Witness employers refusing to pay for blood transfusions (he implies) or religious objections to vaccinations. But “necessarily” is redundant here, following right on the heels of “must.” Why include it? Since every challenge to a law under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) must be analysed in terms of the compelling governmental interest it purports to serve, and the question of whether it is the least restrictive means to serving it, it is a truism that no one could foretell the outcome of a particular religious objection to a rule. But by adding “necessarily,” Justice Alito ironically puts too fine a point on it. He implies that an employer’s religious beliefs may, in contexts other than birth control mandates, merit accommodation under RFRA. The beliefs aren’t necessarily deserving of accommodation, but they aren’t necessarily undeserving either.

So Hobby Lobby does, in fact, open the door to pious bosses pressing objections to all kinds of federal requirements—and not only insurance mandates—it deems out of line with their religious beliefs. Imagine an employer who believes it the duty of men to be breadwinners while women raise children, and that it is his religious duty to instil that reality among his employees. (The suggestion is not outlandish: not so long ago Southern Baptists declared .. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/10/us/southern-baptists-declare-wife-should-submit-to-her-husband.html .. that a woman should “‘submit herself graciously’ to her husband’s leadership and that a husband should ‘provide for, protect and lead his family.'") Should this boss's business be exempted from the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requirement to provide unpaid child-care leave to a male employee?

The suggestion sounds outrageous, and it is. But what in Justice Alito’s opinion would distinguish this from Hobby Lobby’s perfectly reasonable [in debate] exemption from paying for employees’ IUDs or morning after pills? Well, Justice Alito might say, as he does for the immunisation example, that FMLA coverage for male employees “may be supported by different interests”. Yes, of course the interests are “different”: women’s reproductive health and the prevention of childhood disease are different interests, and work-life balance is yet another “different” interest. But this is irrelevant to the analysis. The question under RFRA is whether the interests are compelling enough to override religious objections, and Justice Alito accepts, on p. 40 of his opinion, that “the interest in guaranteeing cost-free access to the four challenged contraceptive methods is compelling within the meaning of RFRA.” It’s not the most ringing endorsement of women’s health, to be sure, and it follows a few paragraphs where Mr Alito casts doubt on how compelling the interest really could be, but it is an endorsement nonetheless. Justice Alito seems to want to say that immunisation is a truly compelling governmental interest whereas free IUDs aren’t, but he suppresses his inner Rush Limbaugh .. http://gawker.com/5889676/rush-limbaugh-women-who-want-birth-control-are-sluts .. and merely implies that.

So the only arrow left in Justice Alito’s quiver is the least-restrictive-means test. Is there any other way of protecting women’s reproductive health that impinges on religious employers less substantially than the contraceptive mandate? Yes, Mr Alito declares, there are two.

First, he says, the government could pay: “The most straightforward way of doing this would be for the Government to assume the cost of providing the four contraceptives at issue to any women who are unable to obtain them under their health-insurance policies due to their employers’ religious objections.” Straightforward? Is Justice Alito familiar with the legislative body known as Congress right across the street? Does he truly think that lawmakers who have tried to repeal Obamcare dozens of times (and haven’t given up .. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/05/19/yes-can-still-repeal-obamacare-let-get-to-work/ ) will be amenable to a new government programme funding morning-after pills? But leave aside the political implausibility. As Justice Ginsburg aptly notes in her dissent, such a work-around is anything but straightforward for women seeking access to a federally guaranteed benefit:

"The ACA [Obamacare]...requires coverage of preventive services through the existing employer-based system of health insurance “so that [employees] face minimal logistical and administrative obstacles.” ...Impeding women’s receipt of benefits “by requiring them to take steps to learn about, and to sign up for, a new [government funded and administered] health benefit” was scarcely what Congress contemplated."

Justice Alito’s second suggested solution sounds more reasonable at first blush, but he undercuts it as soon as he proposes it. The idea is to take an accommodation already available to religious nonprofit groups who object to paying for employees’ birth control and extend it to for-profit companies. Under the accommodation put in place by the Obama administration in June of 2013, universities and charities with a religious objection to contraception could fill out a form requesting an exemption. Women working at these organisations would then receive no-cost birth control directly from the insurance companies, without any payment or coordination from the employer. In gamely laying out this model for closely-held companies, Justice Alito papers over the outrage with which many religious groups have received it .. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/7/religious-university-balks-accommodation-re-files-/ . A spokesman for the Becket Fund, a religious liberty advocacy group, said “the bureaucrats’ proposed solution does not solve anything,” while Colorado Christian University called it “meaningless.” The Little Sisters of the Poor, an organisation in Colorado, is just one charity suing .. http://www.becketfund.org/littlesisters/ .. for an exemption from the terms of the exemption.

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INSERT: After Hobby Lobby, These 82 Corporations Could Drop Birth Control Coverage
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=103995449
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This disgruntled response does not bode well for Justice Alito’s proposed fix and belies its reasonableness as a less restrictive way of providing women with birth control. But that is not what’s most troubling about the proposal: the majority opinion does not even endorse its legality. “We do not decide today,” Justice Alito writes, “whether an approach of this type complies with RFRA for purposes of all religious claims.” That analysis must await another day in court.

Taking pains to portray a ruling as narrow and modest is a fairly sure sign that it is anything but. Such is the case with Justice Alito’s singularly immodest opinion in Hobby Lobby. A new principle now holds that corporations are capable of holding religious beliefs and that these beliefs may be impinged only under very limited circumstances. That is in no sense a narrow decision.

Dig deeper:

We report on the Hobby Lobby case: Obamacare, aborted once more
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/06/hobby-lobby-and-obamacare?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/07/hobby-lobby-ruling

.. seems subscription or registration is required .. i just registered,
but still now am denied access via that link .. takes time, i guess

again, to link ..

After Hobby Lobby, These 82 Corporations Could Drop Birth Control Coverage
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=103995449

[F6]

Gordon College leader joins request for exemption to hiring rule


Gordon College president D. Michael Lindsay.

Bias on sexual orientation at issue

By Evan Allen | Globe Staff
July 04, 2014

The president of a small Christian college north of Boston was among 14 religious leaders who sent a letter to the White House this week requesting a religious exemption to a planned order barring federal contractors from discriminating in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation.

“Without a robust religious exemption . . . this expansion of hiring rights will come at an unreasonable cost to the common good, national unity and religious freedom,” reads the letter [ http://c.o0bg.com/rw/Boston/2011-2020/2014/07/04/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Graphics/gordon_letter.pdf ], signed by Gordon College president D. Michael Lindsay as well as the chief executive of Catholic Charities USA, the executive editor of Christianity Today, prominent evangelical pastor Rick Warren, and other Christian leaders.

The letter was sent Tuesday, a day after the US Supreme Court issued a ruling providing a religious exemption in another area, deciding that family-owned businesses are not required to provide birth control to employees if it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Organizers said the letter was in the works before the Supreme Court ruling. The letter drew sharp criticism from Gordon alumni and students.

Lindsay “has made Gordon a fortress of faith rather than a place where the doors are open to people who want to be part of a conversation about what it means to be a Christian,” said Paul Miller, 29, a co-founder of LGBTQ organization OneGordon who graduated from Gordon in 2008 and worked for the school for three years before leaving because he could not come out as gay while there. “He thinks it’s important that it’s encoded into law that institutions be able to discriminate.”

Some students are planning to send their own letter to the White House supporting LGBT rights.

A Gordon spokesman said Lindsay, who became president in 2011, was unavailable to comment Thursday. But in practice, the college does not take positions on political issues and understands that many different views may be held individually by those who are part of the Gordon community, the spokesman, Rick Sweeney, wrote in an e-mail.

Sweeney pointed to another letter he said was sent to the White House on June 25 requesting the religious exemption that was signed by about 150 people, including members and leadership of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, of which Gordon is a member. Gordon did not sign.

“Dr. Lindsay agreed to add his name to [Tuesday’s letter] to affirm the College’s support on the underlying concern for religious liberty, not to take a political position for the college,” Sweeney said.

The Wenham college, which has 1,707 undergraduate and 402 graduate students, according to the president’s office, contains in its online student handbook a list of “behavioral expectations” for members of the Gordon community, which expressly forbids homosexual practice, and other activities including theft, drunkenness, and sex outside marriage, all on or off the campus.

White House officials last month announced that President Obama planned to sign the executive order that is the subject of Tuesday’s letter. No federal law currently bans workplace discrimination explicitly on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

While Obama does not have the authority to extend that protection to all Americans, he can take unilateral action that affects federal contractors, which make up nearly one-quarter of the US workforce.

The letter sent to Obama says the signatories are against discrimination.

“We believe that all persons are created in the divine image of the creator, and are worthy of respect and love, without exception. Even so, it still may not be possible for all sides to reach a consensus on every issue,” the letter reads. “That is why we are asking that an extension of protection for one group not come at the expense of faith communities whose religious identity and beliefs motivate them to serve those in need.”

However, the letter argues, an executive order that does not include a religious exemption would “substantively hamper” religious charities’ abilities to do their work. “In a concrete way, religious organizations will lose financial funding that allows them to serve others in the national interest due to their organizational identity,” the letter reads.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the specifics of the order and did not respond to questions about whether the order would include a religious exemption.

Michael Wear, who served in the White House faith-based initiative during Obama’s first term and directed faith outreach for Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, helped write the letter. He said its intent is to find a way to protect LGBT rights but also assures religious organizations that hire “according to their religious identity” that they will not be automatically disqualified from competing for federal contracts.

“Not all sides are going to be happy, but we can’t treat this as a zero-sum game. That’s not a healthy way to go about these kinds of decisions,” said Wear, who is based in Washington. The letter came on the heels of Monday’s Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision, which granted religious protections to for-profit corporations for the first time — a move hailed by social conservatives and slammed by women’s health groups.

Though Wear said Tuesday’s letter was in the works before the Hobby Lobby decision, some observers said it follows the same philosophy.

“I think we for a long time have been watching this campaign focused on securing a right to discrimination using religion as a guide,” said Rob Keithan, director of Public Policy for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a national organization working with other advocates to draft a response to Tuesday’s letter. “Whether or not this letter and Hobby Lobby were coordinated, it’s all part of the same movement of attempting to skirt antidiscrimination laws.”

Gordon students and alumni, too, are planning a response to Tuesday’s letter.

“We believe that the same protections should be extended to LGBT persons, regardless of the organizations they’re a member of,” said Conor Krupke, 21, who graduated from Gordon in May. While at Gordon, Krupke cofounded and coedited a blog called “Student Inqueery” about sexual identity and Christianity.

Gordon’s president, he said, does not speak for the whole community. Krupke said he is seeking signatures for the response letter from students, alumni, faculty, and staff, and plans to send it to the White House. “When things like this take place, you begin to realize how truly in the dark you are; it is difficult to tell how much progress, if any, has been made for LGBTQ+ students and faculty at Gordon over the years,” Juwan Campbell, a Gordon student and writer for Student Inqueery, said in an e-mail.

Some current and former students said that being gay at Gordon meant hiding who they were from the administration. Miller, the OneGordon cofounder who is not involved in the Student Inqueery letter, said he struggled with depression while working at Gordon and ultimately left Christianity.

“I wonder, if Gordon had been affirming of LGBT people, if I’d still be a person of faith,” said Miller. “And the reason I’m not is the place that provided the most compassionate and intellectually robust and civic-minded Christianity that I’d ever encountered told me that I couldn’t be part of their community.”

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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Read more:

Supreme Court limits birth control coverage rule
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/06/30/supreme-court-gives-businesses-religious-exemption-from-birth-control-coverage/lQPwIwZRyuZ3r6csO02SJI/story.html

Editorial: Supreme Court loses its way in Hobby Lobby decision
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2014/06/30/supreme-court-loses-its-way-vague-contraceptive-decision/ZAAbAwD6oIQXySUsLyaTQO/story.html

Court allows college to avoid filling out document over contraceptives
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/07/03/high-court-grants-wheaton-college-plea/tOyNzFek5ki1XMxvCtn4mJ/story.html

Mass. abortion clinic buffer zones ruled illegal
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/06/26/supreme-court-throws-out-massachusetts-abortion-clinic-buffer-zone-law/VTTYHYD8oiVJJNreAPyKAN/story.html

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© 2014 Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC, Associated Press

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/03/gordon-college-president-signs-letter-asking-for-religious-exemption-from-order-banning-anti-gay-discrimination/79cgrbFOuUg7lxH2rKXOgO/story.html [with comments]

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