Let’s tiptoe into Hobby Lobby and belt out a scream

In the world of manufactured, contrived controversies, the Hobby Lobby drama is surely some of the best of all time.

And by best, I mean worst.

Over the last week, Tina and I were in North Carolina visiting my family and friends. While there, Tina wanted to buy some spray paint so my parents guided us toward Hobby Lobby, a — according to my dad — very lucrative chain hobby store apparently owned by Christians.

Evangelical Christians, perhaps is a better descriptor.

With Obama’s health care legislation slowly coming into effect, Hobby Lobby’s owners are up-in-arms over the requirement to have insurance coverage for its employees that includes access to birth control and more importantly the morning after pill and the week after pill.

You can read more about it — in mainstream media — here, here, here, here and oh — look at that — here. 

I remember hearing a bit about the story — in mainstream media — over the past couple weeks.

I write that, because people who post it are claiming the mainstream media is not covering it.

So just so we’re straight, the mainstream media is covering the story. The complaint should be, “But they aren’t screaming about how awful this Christian oppression is!”

Oh the horror. Oh the pain.

While we were standing in line to buy spray paint at Hobby Lobby, my dad told Tina about the greatness of the Hobby Lobby Enterprise, that they make great profits. They treat their employees with a family-centric goodness (they get off evenings and Sundays). They are profitable and stand by their Christian principles.

Last night, I saw this update on Facebook:

The link is for this blog from a guy named Denny Burk, a professor of Biblical studies at  Boyce College.

The crux of the post is about how appalling it is that Hobby Lobby is going to be fined $1.3 million a day (a day!) if they do not comply with the mandate to offer proper insurance to its employees.

Hobby Lobby — a privately- and Christian-owned company — should not have to offer the option of the morning after pill to its employees if the owners are backwards-minded “Christians.”

Right?

And there is also a post from Hobby Lobby’s senior staff screaming for help from you to share their plight.

But who can hear their screams over the pounding bombings from the war on Christmas?

The fine, mind you, is idiotic. 

That fine is mind-bogglingly steep. $100,000 a day would be ridiculous.

But let’s get past the fine for two seconds and talk about this.

Hobby Lobby is a for-profit company. They are lucrative. And according to my dad — really, really lucrative.  I imagine that you don’t have to be a Christian to work there. But I’m sure it’s encouraged. And if you weren’t a Christian, you might get some pressure.

I mean, I have atheist friends who work at Christian organizations, because they are treated well and why leave a good thing? These are people who remain anonymous about their lack of beliefs.

Hobby Lobby isn’t a church. It’s not a place that is tax exempted, and therefore secular as a pineapple. If you want to be viable in the cultural battle, you can’t have a for-profit corporation and scream and cry that a bit of insurance is going to defile your Christian proclivities.

If that were the case, you’d follow biblical principles to the hilt. You wouldn’t have a profitable company. You’d give all your money to the poor and support social ideologies. You’d heal your sick customers with magical powers.

I bet you $1000 that when the enemies of Hobby Lobby are lying almost dead by the side of the road, they aren’t stopping, picking them up and taking them to the hospital. They aren’t paying all their bills.

I bet you $10,000 they aren’t requiring their women employees to stay quiet at work.

I bet you $100,000 if you asked one of their employees to give you the coat off their back, they would say no.

If the only thing that makes you a Christian company is that you close on Sundays and evenings, yet have a hillbilly mentality over sexual issues, that doesn’t make you Christian.

How do you spell idiotic? 

In many ways, it should be more appalling that Hobby Lobby is so backwards that they don’t support its female staff with insurance policies that cover their many health needs, including these supposed controversial birth control options.

I’m going to wager a guess as to why this is a non-issue — and that men are the only people I’ve seen up-in-arms about this story. It’s because women want their sexual freedom and they tacitly want access.

When said and done, everyone knows someone who has needed access to that kind of healthcare. Everyone knows lots of people who benefitted and made their lives better.

It’s not an issue, because women are silently screaming that they think they deserve it.

The issue is that the Evangelical Christian concept of sin is smothering their voices and putting out their fires. To come out and say, “I deserve proper healthcare” would be an admission of what’s deemed a “sin.”

And when the church has the ability to squelch voices, you have to read between the lines.

It’s not an issue, because it’s NOT an issue.

The more evangelical Christians scream foul, the more they perpetuate the stereotype that men control their women’s voices. The more they perpetuate that Christians are backwards and stone aged weirdos.

They want to get all 1 Corinthians 14:13 and 1 Timothy 2:12 on your asses.

I don’t want Hobby Lobby to go out of business. And I wouldn’t be upset if legislation gives Hobby Lobby the right to their “Christian” ideas, as backwards as they are.

If people want to shop at a place that encourages people to buy cheap shit and fill their homes with it, Yeshua bless ’em.

We should all remember that Hobby Lobby’s ownership is run by men who insult modern intelligence.

And if that’s something you want to support with your hard-earned money, by all means.

I hope that more people would hold them up to the Christian fire and make them accountable to the rest of the principles that they ignore every time they open their doors.

All I ask is that if you’re going to claim “Christianity” as your rationale, than you have to go through an exacting screen process showing how like Jesus you are in your corporate affairs. If you can show how your behavior and actions line up directly with Jesus’s commands … then by all means, you get to tell Obamacare to fuck off.

And you can’t hide behind, well, Christians aren’t perfect. But Jesus is. Because you have no proof on that either.

Own up, Christians. Own up to your set of rules and regulations before crying bloody murder. Otherwise, you remain the holy hypocrites that the rest of us are tired of.

Until then, Hobby Lobby has no argument.

The hypocrisy is so thick you couldn’t cut it with a nuclear missile armed to the blow up Okinawa.