Why Is It So Hard to Understand Government Shouldn't Force Employers to Purchase Birth Control or Permit Guns on Premises?
The (leftie) internet went bonkers yesterday over the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, a narrow ruling that only let "closely held" corporations whose owners had a religious objection to paying for certain kind of contraceptives (abortifacients) off the hook from Obamacare's "contraceptive mandate." Employees, of course, would still be free to purchase supplemental insurance to cover birth control and to see their doctor to get a prescription for birth control. They can't purchase birth control over the counter but that's not because of the Supreme Court or employers with objections—it's because the federal government prohibits the sale of birth control over the counter.
Nevertheless for a certain kind of spouter of partisan talking points, the Supreme Court ruling—that the government could not, in fact, bully people into doing something if those people have religious objections—was more evidence of the "war on women" Democrats plan to keep running on.
Meanwhile in Georgia, a new gun bill that permits lawfully licensed residents to carry their firearms into a wide range of "public accommodations" (like bars) and actual government buildings goes into effect today*. Opponents of the bill, generally liberals, tend to be the same people who opposed the Hobby Lobby ruling, while conservatives who applauded the Hobby Lobby ruling for protecting religious liberty applaud Georgia's law for protecting their Second Amendment rights.
Libertarians have to laugh or they'd cry. The partisan break on Hobby Lobby and Georgia's gun law doesn't make sense if principles mattered. After all, if an employer has a right not to be coerced by the government to purchase something for an employee, that same employer ought to have a right not to be coerced by the government to permit something on his property. Whether the specific objections are religious shouldn't even matter—either you have a right to run your workplace and business as you please or it belongs to the government. For too many partisan ideologues, liberal and conservative, the latter applies. Their political preferences trump any lip service to principles.
*UPDATE: The law allows private property owners to "exclude or eject" people carrying firearms. Private property owners shouldn't need a law to let them exclude who they want, nor one to require specific kinds of compensation.
