We used to be a country devoted to protecting and ensuring the rights of its citizens. Our rights were those innate human qualities and capacities, endowed by a Creator God, infused into the human spirit, needing only to be expressed, not provided by any man-made authority. Now we are a country devoted to fabricating and engineering the rights of its citizens.

Ready for it?

I’ve poured through mounds of research, read pages and pages of court precedent; I’ve reflected on it, meditated, retreated into the mountains to ponder this mystery in peace; I’ve even Googled it, and all of these measures have brought me to one incredible solution for women who want birth control:

Pay for it yourselves.

Or find an employer that chooses to provide it.

Or have sex and don’t use it.

Or don’t have sex.

Basically, take responsibility for your sex life, one way or another.

There you go. I’ve solved this dilemma. You’re welcome.

I only bring this up because the Hobby Lobby challenge to Barack’s Birth Control Mandate has finally reached the supreme court.

If you aren’t familiar, Hobby Lobby – a store known for its picture frames, fake indoor plants, and dangerous religious extremism –  has refused to comply with the president’s decree that all employers must provide whatever kind of “health coverage” he personally feels we all should be using.

The store already subsidizes several forms of birth control, but wishes not to purchase things like morning after pills and IUDs. The government has responded to their concerns by making three basic points:

1) Hobby Lobby is not a religious organization.

2) Emergency contraception is not abortion.

3) Lots of women use contraception.

To which all rational and reasonable adults respond with three counter arguments:

1) That’s irrelevant.

2) That’s irrelevant.

3) Oh, good point. Actually, just kidding, that’s irrelevant.

Unfortunately, it might be necessary to offer a more detailed retort.

Here goes:

1) It doesn’t matter if Hobby Lobby is a religious organization. Nowhere in the First Amendment does it stipulate that only religious organizations are afforded religious protections. This argument is like something out of a 20th century dystopian science fiction novel.

We have the right to live by our convictions, but only if we are officially employed by some group that the government defines as “religious”? Religious freedom, but the government gets to decide what constitutes “religious”?  By that logic, only priests count as “being Catholic,” and only rabbis really get to be Jewish.

What an impossibly ridiculous argument. Besides, where is it written that only “religious people” might prefer to forgo purchasing some forms, or all forms, of birth control? Other kinds of people might have other kinds of objections. In the end, it doesn’t matter. They own the business. They purchase the plans. They make the decision.

This is exceedingly clear to anyone with their brain fully engaged, but sadly, the sheep will follow the pigs on the Animal Farm, because they’re too dumb or too selfish or too apathetic to realize that this sort of tyranny will eventually come back around and destroy them.

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