The Supreme Court's recent ruling allowing companies like Hobby Lobby not to cover contraception compelled openly gay actor George Takei to support a boycott against it and other companies that choose “to impose [their] religious beliefs on… employees.”
In part, Takei's blog post reads:
… As Justice Ginsberg's stinging dissent pointed out, companies run by Scientologists could refuse to cover antidepressants, and those run by Jews or Hindus could refuse to cover medications derived from pigs (such as many anesthetics, intravenous fluids, or medications coated in gelatin)… one wonders whether the case would have come out differently if a Muslim-run chain business attempted to impose Sharia law on its employees.
As many have pointed out, Hobby Lobby is the same company that invests in Pfizer and Teva Pharmaceuticals, makers of abortion inducing-drugs and the morning after pill. It also buys most of its inventory from China, where forced abortions are common. The hypocrisy is galling.
… Once the law starts permitting exceptions based on “sincerely held religious beliefs” there's no end to the mischief and discrimination that will ensue. Indeed, this is the same logic that certain restaurants and hotels have been trying to deploy to allow proprietors to refuse service to gay couples.
We are a nation that respects religious beliefs, but also the right not to have those beliefs imposed upon you by others…
While we work to overturn this decision by legislation, people of good conscious should BOYCOTT any for-profit business, including Hobby Lobby, which chooses to impose its religious beliefs on its employees.
The only way such companies ever learn to treat people with decency and tolerance is to hit them where it counts–in their pocketbooks. I won't be shopping there, and women everywhere should exercise their right of protest and refuse to shop there as well.
In related news, Twitter users have begun skewering Hobby Lobby's win by using the #DrHobbyLobby hashtag to ask the company ironic questions about women's health.
The feminist blog Jezebel also has a list of 82 other companies and organizations that oppose health care coverage for birth control.
