The Hobby Lobby Slippery Slope
by digby
No, it's not just about birth control:
As we noted yesterday in our post about Bryan Fischer interviewing Rep. Michele Bachmann, a group of conservative leaders - including Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, and David Barton - have gathered for a Religious Right event in Iowa aimed at mobilizing pastors called "Rediscover God In America."
The event is being webcast by the American Family Association and last night David Barton got the festivities underway by explaining to the audience that all of our economic and tax policies ought to be dictated by the Bible ... and that means getting rid of the minimum wage because it was opposed by Jesus (Barton didn't actually cite the passage he uses to support this claim in this presentation, but it is Matthew 20:1-16)
And that's not all:
Religious Right activist David Barton promotes his version of American exceptionalism (America was created by its divinely inspired founders as a country of, by, and for evangelical Christians) and b iblical capitalism (Jesus and the Bible oppose progressive taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, and minimum wage laws). Claiming divine backing is a long-standing Religious Right technique with a powerful political edge: if God supports radically limited government, then progressive policies are not only wrong but evil, and liberals are not only political opponents but enemies of God.
On a conference call with pastors two days after the November 2010 elections to celebrate conservative victories, Barton asserted a biblical underpinning for far-right economic policies: Taxation and deficit spending amount to theft, a violation of the Ten Commandments. The estate tax is “absolutely condemned” by the Bible as the “most immoral” of taxes. Jesus had “teachings” condemning the capital gains tax and minimum wage.
Barton also enlists Jesus in the war against unions and collective bargaining. According to Barton, a parable from the 20th chapter of the book of Matthew about the owner of a vineyard making different arrangements with workers was about “the right of private contract” – in other words, the right of employers to come to individual agreements with each employee. Jesus’ parable, he said, is “anti-minimum wage” and “anti-socialist-union kind of stuff.”
I am going to guess that if the Supremes rule that corporations have a right to refuse to follow laws if they believe they interfere with their "religious liberty" they will be able to find a Bible verse supporting every single item on the 1%'s agenda. It's a big book.
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