Domino's Wins Temporary Injunction Against Birth-Control Mandate on Religious Conscience Grounds

Previously, Hobby Lobby lost its own bid for an injunction. Now Domino's wins, creating a split that will have to be resolved by higher courts at some point.

A federal judge has ordered a temporary halt on the Obama administration’s birth-control coverage policy for Tom Monaghan, the Catholic billionaire who founded Domino’s Pizza.

Federal District Court Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff issued the decision Sunday, less than two days before the policy would have taken effect and exposed Monaghan to fines for non-compliance.

“Plaintiff has shown that abiding by the mandate will substantially burden his exercise of religion,” Zatkoff wrote.

“The government has failed to satisfy its burden of showing that its actions were narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. … This factor weighs in favor of granting Plaintiffs’ motion.”

How did we come to the point that religious liberty was worth violating in order to satisfy some people's demand to be subsidized $3-6 per month for birth control?

The feminists have an odd theory that religious strictures about sex and birth control are specifically about controlling women's reproduction, taking decisions from women and giving them to "the patriarchy." They insist that such strictures exist specifically to subtract rights from women to deliver them to men (or male-dominated institutions), rather than serving as directives that apply to both genders.

So they've ginned up $3-6 per month as a serious civil rights issue. If men needed birth control, it would already be paid for, they insist, overlooking the fact that men do need (or, at least, often want) birth control, and men's birth control expenses are also not covered.

As is true with so much of our politics -- and I think this is detestable -- the bottom-line consequences of what they seek are minor in the extreme. What is really sought is an encoded-into-law declaration of the legal supremacy of one culture over another, to the extent that the culture which has lost this political debate is actually now illegal and cannot exist as it previously had.

While such matters were previously left to each individual conscience -- each person herself or himself decided whether to use birth control, and paid using his own private money -- a law is now on the books stating that everyone must pay for birth control, no matter what one's religious beliefs may say about it.

This isn't about $3-6 per month, of course. It's specifically about using the law to win a cultural argument through coercive force. If you can't persuade them, criminalize them.

posted by Ace at 12:24 PM

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