As a gay blogger, it is easy to look at last Summer’s US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision in the Windsor case as the single most important decision affecting the LGBTQ community, but that was until today when the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4, siding with Hobby Lobby and allowing private businesses to ignore a key provision in the Affordable Care Act and hindering the right of women to make decisions regarding their reproductive health. That sentence uses the sound bite language most connected, but in reality, the decision goes much, much further and in my opinion, is possibly the most significant overall decision of the Supreme Court after the debacle known as Citizen’s United. I’d go so far as to say that today, the Supreme Court began the next phase of Jim Crow-like law in the United States by arming conservatives with the tools needed to discriminate against women, the poor and potentially any other minority that the Religious factions seek to suppress.

There are two important aspects to this ruling and each deserve more attention, but today, I’ll simply identify them. In some regards, they are not connected, and in ways they are connected, but both offer a glimpse into the troubling future created with this ruling.

Corporations as Persons

This trend was really set in motion when this same Supreme Court ruled in the Citizen’s United decision that corporate spending is free speech. It wasn’t too much of a stretch then, that in this ruling they find that those same corporations can have religious beliefs.

However, while the one may follow the other, it is actually much harder to rationalize that a corporation can have religious beliefs. There is no way to theologically make a case for corporations as persons, and in fact the very nature of capitalism can be seen as being at odds with Biblical teachings.

Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

The Supreme Court isn’t concerned however with the theology of the issue, rather only the judicial arguments, and in that regard their ruling was consistent with heir earlier ruling allowing corporations to hold the rights of persons.

The real problem occurs when a question is raised about the rights of an actual person as compared to the rights of this corporation as person. One has to wonder if there is a level playing field, and my guess is that there isn’t.

Religious Liberties Used as an Excuse to Ignore the Constitution

This is in my opinion, probably the most troubling effect of the ruling as it allows a vague idea of “religious liberty” to usurp the Constitution and opens the door for this ruling to become a foundation for many types of religious bias and prejudice. I see this ruling as setting the stage in a way similar to the way the Dred Scot ruling set the stage for discrimination towards African Americans. It is easy today to label segregation as wrong, but it is crucial to remember that the US Supreme Court set the stage for segregation to take hold and flourish by the actions in the Dred Scot case, and followed by Pressy v Ferguson. This state sanctions discrimination which was not rectified until Brown vs the Board of Education following almost 100 years after Dred Scot.

These two aspects make this decision potentially one of the most damaging decisions since the founding of our Country and the birth of our Constitutional Democracy.