The argument really makes no sense. In the case of Hobby Lobby they were being told that they must pay for a medical service that they find morally offensive and which goes against their deeply held and long established religious beliefs. The morons at the church of satan are not being against to pay for a service which there religion has long held as a murder. A few liberal ivory tower law professors who object to the ruling based on their own personal political chiming in with this silly argument changes nothing.
the supreme court decision said that:
(a) a corporate entity has a right to religious expression as an extension of its owner as long as it is a "closely held" company. this blurs the line between legal entity and actual persons, meaning that if it stands as written Hobby Lobby's owners can personally be held accountable for their corporation's criminal activity, should any happen to be found. previously the corporation shielded the owners from liability in a lot of cases
(b) the Court said that -- now that a corporation has a legal right to religious expression -- they can express their religion by filling out the form previously provided only to actual religious corporate entities like churches and church-based charities. the form is supposed to raise the objection to specific points of Obamacare, and is meant to give cover to actual religious beliefs, not religious beliefs which appear when a company decides they don't want to follow the law like everyone else. also, the Court ruled three days later that filling out the form is an undue burden after they said the form was not an undue burden. for all the talk of activist judging from the right wingers, this is what that practice looks like.
(c) a side product of the Hobby Lobby decision is that you can hold any random belief you like to exempt yourself from federal and state laws, even if it goes against reality. despite actual scientific evidence that none of the covered versions of contraception at the heart of the lawsuit are abortifacents or cause abortions, this became irrelevant once the five anti-abortion judges decided they wanted to rule against reality.
but, all that goes out the window because people like yourself got what you wanted even though reality disagrees with you. so when another entity like the Church of Satan comes along and uses the ruling you favor to point out the absurdity of the argument -- as well as using actual science to back up their beliefs -- you fall all over yourself trying to pretend it's some communist plot to destroy America or something.
"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman
