This Is Hobby Lobby

In July 2010, Felicia Allen was hired as a part-time cashier at a Hobby Lobby in Flowood, Mississippi. Soon after she began working, she discovered she was four months’ pregnant with her third child and, because she had only been employed a short time, she did not qualify for leave under the federal Family Medical Leave Act—something Hobby Lobby offers for maternity leave.

Felicia Allen went to her supervisor.

“I asked her would I lose my job due to me being four months and only having five months before I have my child. She told me ‘no.’ I felt like everything was OK. I had talked to my boss, and she let me know that everything would be OK. I would still have my job.”

But five months later, when the time came to take her leave of absence to have her child, that same supervisor told her she would be terminated for taking unpaid time off to have a baby, but she could reapply afterwards if she wanted her job back; side note: she tried to come back to work three weeks after her child was born but she was denied..

“I was like, I can’t get fired. She can’t terminate me because I have to go have my child. I started asking everybody on the job, ‘Can they do this?’ And even the assistant manager who had just got hired [said,] ‘No, that’s not right.’”

And it got worse. The so-called Christian craft store then tried to prevent Felicia Allen from accessing unemployment benefits and she was not allowed to sue the company for those benefits. See, Hobby Lobby, which likes to crow about operating its business based on “Christian” values—like firing a pregnant woman then refusing to rehire her—requires  its employees to sign a binding arbitration agreement saying they cannot sue the company to resolve employment disagreements, but instead go through arbitration. Companies like Hobby Lobby claim arbitration is better for both parties because it tends to take less time and money, and usually employers are required to cover employees’ legal fees.

But Hobby Lobby has a different arbitration policy from most corporations in that it allows for “Christian-influenced” arbitration. The mutual arbitration agreement Felicia Allen signed gives employees the option of an arbitrator through the nonprofit American Arbitration Association [AAA] or the Institute for Christian Conciliation [ICC], run by a nonprofit called Peacemaker Ministries which views arbitration as “a process for reconciling people and resolving disputes out of court in a biblical manner”:

“Generally, Christians are not free to sue other Christians, at least not until they have exhausted the process that Jesus sets forth in Matthew 18:15-20 and 1 Corinthians 6:1-8. God instructs Christians to resolve their disputes within the church itself, with the assistance of other Christians if necessary.”

Christians can’t sue Christians, but Christians can fire a pregnant woman and then tell her she cannot be rehired.

At the end of the arbitration — during which Allen says Hobby Lobby’s corporate office gave a false version of events, claiming she could have taken off personal leave but chose not to — she won her claim for unemployment benefits, but felt she had been wrongly discriminated based on the fact that she was pregnant. And so, in February 2012 she tried to sue, but her lawsuit was dropped because of that arbitration agreement she was forced to sign.

These days Felicia Allen works at Xerox while pursuing an associate’s degree in accounting and says she is through with Hobby Lobby.

“How can you be Christian and lie about something to hinder your employee or don’t want them to come back after they’ve had their baby? Or you’re taking up for your manager knowing that they had done the wrong thing. I feel like that’s not being Christian at all. That’s why I don’t even shop there anymore. I used to shop at that store all the time.”

Naturally, Hobby Lobby has no response because, well, liars and hypocrites. 

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Think It Can't Happen? Think Again

So, yeah, right after the Supremes ruled that Hobby Lobby, a corporation, could tell their employees what kind of contraceptives they could use—while Hobby Lobby invests in, and profits from, the very contraceptives they are ALLEGEDLY against — Carlos and I wondered about The Gays; specifically the Gays with HIV/AIDS.

What if some corporation decided that their faith said that being gay was a sin, and therefore against the beliefs of that person corporation, and that corporation decided that their healthcare plan wouldn’t pay for their gay employees HIV meds?

I thought, Well, that can’t happen here …

Then I thought again, because, immediately after the SCOTUS decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. a decision celebrated, celebrated, by a number of anti-LGBT activists, the thought has come up. The new Hobby Lobby decision could very well have an impact on Truvada, a controversial "miracle drug" that blocks HIV infection and may revolutionize the battle against HIV/AIDS.

When taken properly, Truvada — a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) treatment combining two different antivirals, for use by patients deemed at risk for HIV/AIDS — reduces the risk of HIV by more than 99% effective.

However, with our new SCOTUS ruling that corporations are people and their corporate religious beliefs can impact their healthcare choices and options, perhaps Truvada might not be allowed under certain corporations healthcare plans because, well, God and The Gays.

Back in April, USA Today ran a piece on the similarities between the controversy surrounding Truvada and conservative opposition to birth control. In that piece, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis noted that the Truvada debate is very similar to the way birth control was viewed by many in the 1960s, who saw it as an excuse for promiscuity; women could run around having all the sex they wanted and never get pregnant because they had The Pill. Now, some folks think that gay men will use Truvada in that same way.

So, again, I wonder, is it any great leap to think that an employer might use his or her faith, using similar arguments to the ones made in the Hobby Lobby case to justify denying health insurance coverage for Truvada.

Think it can’t happen here? Remember how many of us thought the Hobby Lobby case couldn’t happen … until it did.

via Media Matters

Sunday Not Funny: SCOTUS Gets Lobbied ... Hobby Lobbied

Hobby Lobby ... Your Source For Christian Love

The Green family, who own and run the Hobby Lobby stores — we have one here in Columbia, in which I will not set one foot — like to proclaim how ‘Christian’ they are; Steve Green, the president of the company, proudly says, "We're Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles."

Hardly. Look at the crap they sell and I dare you to find many that don’t say ‘Made In china’ on the bottom. I double-dog dare you.

China, a country that has one of the worst human rights records in history; a country where children often toil in sweatshops making the little trinkets you can buy at Hobby Lobby; a country where, in Shanghai at least, the minimum wage is $293 … a month. And that;s the highest paid anywhere in mainland China; it works out to about $10.00 a day … a little more than a dollar an hour.

That’s what your Christian Hobby Lobby is selling you. Doesn’t sound very Christ-like does it? Can you call yourself a "Christian business" when you support underage labor?

And since this issue is ALLEGEDLY all about Hobby Lobby’s Christian owner’s refusal to pay for contraceptives under their healthcare plan, let’s look at how China handles that situation, since Hobby Lobby is really an extension of the Chinese marketplace right here in our own back yard.

Think about China's one-child policy, which means that many Chinese couples hope for sons to carry on the family name; female children are considered valueless and because of that there is an enormous underground abortion business going on. Hobby Lobby, in purchasing goods made by children for a dollar an hour funds that abortion business. So, so Christ-like.

There are roughly 35,000 abortions in China every single day; 336 million over the last four decades. In purchasing Chinese made products, Hobby Lobby pays for that,. though they don't want you to know it.

Okay, sure, lotsa companies buy their goods from China and sell them on their shelves to us, but how many proclaim to be ‘Christian’ businesses run on Christian principles? How can they be so riled up about providing employees with health insurance covering contraceptives when they don’t give a good God damn about the policies in China that result in horrific child labor and forced abortions? 

If contributing to a healthcare system that provides state funded abortions or birth control was truly against their deeply held Christian beliefs, Hobby Lobby could easily have chosen to buy and sell goods made in the US. And they could have opted to do business in any part of the world where these services aren’t funded by tax dollars. They did not.

How is that Christian love?

And speaking of Christianity and faith, think about the 1.35 billion Chinese people who are denied the freedom to worship; Hobby Lobby doesn’t care about that because they have knick-knacks to sell.

So, if you shop at Hobby Lobby, think about that the next time; think about the children who made that plate; think about the women forced to undergo abortions because their unborn child won’t be male; think about the people in China who cannot freely worship. And if you still want that little trinket, then stop calling yourself a Christian, because you aren’t. If you still want to spend your money at Hobby Lobby, go right ahead, but in addition to knowing what you are buying, and where it came from, and how it was made, know where your hard-earned dollars go.

For their employees’ 401K plans, Hobby Lobby invests in the very industries the Greens say they oppose; they invest, and make money off of, the makers of Plan B, Tevo Pharmaceutical Industry. They also invest in Actavus, which makes a generic version of Plan B, and also distributes Ella, a second form of birth control that Hobby Lobby claims to be religiously opposed to.

Unless they’re making an investment in it.

Hobby Lobby also has investments in Pfizer, AstroZeneca and Forest Laboratories; companies that make drugs commonly used in abortions, including Cytotec, Prostin E2 and Cervidil. Hobby Lobby’s 401K investment program, which offers an employer matching contribution, also invests in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover abortion, abortion drugs as well as Plan B and Ella.

But they have no problem with that because they're making money off of those investments.

And finally, know that, just before declaring their Christian faith as a reason to opt out of paying for contraception under their healthcare plan, Hobby Lobby’s own private insurance plan actually provided coverage for both Plan B and Ella; it wasn’t until Obamacare came along that they suddenly had an issue with it.

That ain't Christian, it's Teabagging.

So, when you listen to folks praise Hobby Lobby for standing up for their Christian faith, be aware that they are not being truthful. They buy goods from countries that fund abortions, state-sanctioned and illegal abortions; they buy goods from countries that have one of the worst records for child labor laws. And, they take your money, the money you spend on bric-a-brac and crap, and invest it in the very companies that provide the kinds of drugs and services they say their Christian faith is against.

That is not Christian love; it’s hypocrisy; it’s corporate greed; it’s a lie.

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#JoinTheDissent

via The Advocate