Blessed Christian Patriarchy and Blessed Pennies on the Dollar

A lot of the arguments used in Hobby Lobby’s defense can be brokered down to an overwhelming sense that Hobby Lobby is actually a good, caring employer and takes care of its employees. The government – and especially the OBAMA government – is just forcing them to buy baby-killing pills against their good, Christian conscience.

None of which is actually true, of course. These are statements – on abortion, on religious rights, on employment – that belie a fundamental concern of Conservative Christianity – one that undermines Jesus’ own commandments: patriarchy.

In other words, the conservative Christian defense is one supporting Christian Patriarchy. Christian Patriarchy being an oxymoron. In Aristotle, Greeks were above non-Greeks, males above females, free-borns above slaves. There is order and dominance; dominating and ordering. “In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor freeborn.” “You are not to lord over others,” Jesus demands of his followers. We Christians are to serve. Not force. Not rape. Not act as the parents of our employees. Not force them to go along with our religious convictions. Not gloat about paying certain ones a near-living wage while forcing others – in another country who look different from most of Hobby Lobby’s state-side employees and customers - to make pennies on the dollar for their work.

The pennies on the dollar phrase comes from a glowing Forbes profile on David Green, Hobby Lobby's founder, CEO, and patriarch. Here, Green is valued as a pious hero of capitalism who claims that it’s religious devotion and God’s favor that has raised his capital worth to well over $3 billion. Forbes, being the capitalist cheerleaders they are, could smell Green’s veiled business plan a few thousand miles away. In China, for instance.

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes with the founder, walking through a local Hobby Lobby store, to see the reason he has been able to expand his company into a well-oiled, moneymaking machine without bringing in any outside investors.
Stopping at a display marked 30% off, Green explains how a kitschy rooster ornament is produced overseas for pennies on the dollar, then sold as part of an in-house brand of home accents.

Father David Green / had many employees /
Many employees had Father David Green...

Hobby Lobby doesn’t usually like to divulge such reasons, so Forbes had quite the scoop here. Usually, David Green answers questions about Hobby Lobby's success with religious pablum along the lines of “God has been faithful,” or, “I was full of pride and God heard me when I humbled myself.” Neither of which I buy – not that they are not true. But lots of good Christians are faithful and humble and decent and don’t exploit overseas workers for pennies on the dollar. And they end up with miscarriages and early deaths and sick kids and behind bars. Most of them – contrary to what conservative, mostly white, mostly suburban churches imply – are living in sub-poverty and hand-to-mouth conditions. Many, many lack clean, running, potable water. Most lack adequate food. Very few are comfortably middle class. And only, out of over a billion, probably fewer than I have fingers for, are billionaires.

This intensely unique blessing, of course, entitles Hobby Lobby to be relatively generous to its full-time employees. They pay a starting minimum wage of $13 for FT workers (closer to state minimum wages for most part-timers, though) and even offer them health care insurance. Where, we have been told, they cover contraceptives. But just not the Morning After Pill. Because that would be killing babies.

Even though that's not what it is.

Of course, lots of companies and organizations offer selective coverage. And I suppose they are entitled to that. Of course, if we truly had universal health care, this would not be an issue. And that is an underlying issue here - no mistake about it. But then it was the Evangelical culture of which Green is a part of that fought universal health care tooth and nail - under, again, the misguided notion that their opposition was saving babies' lives, rather than killing more lives. Truthfully, the "pro-life" movement is responsible for more abortions by not supporting universal health care and for risking the lives of women everywhere by both not supporting universal health care and trying to forcibly block abortions, rather than try to persuade people that they're serious about life*. But I repeat myself again...

Another point here is the fact that Hobby Lobby is not providing health care for all eligible workers - which is why it is supposed to comply with the Affordable Care Act in the first place.

Yet, his position as Blessed Employer/Billionaire entitles Green to know what God wants. And Green's version of God doesn't want him to participate in a health care plan that would give working class women options over their own bodies or health and which Green finds religiously offensive - despite the fact that the science isn't there to support his claims to the contrary and his employees don't have to share his religious obligations over their own bodies. The Morning After Pill is abortion, Christian Patriarchy logic says, because every spermed egg is sacred. (Not sacred enough to keep the human body from flushing from 1/2 to three-fourths of them, but sacred enough that the idea of a pill that negates it is boogey-monstering them up all hours of the night).

Keep on swimming, swimming... Must not fail daddy...

More to the point, his position as Blessed Employer/Billionaire endows Green with the green light to tell his employees how to live.

There is a notice to vendors on the wall at Hobby Lobby headquarters prohibiting "gifts of any value" to employees, who must "pay their share of lunches" and shouldn't be expected to accept dinner invitations no matter who's paying, "as they will be with their families during the evening." 

It's business ethics to have employees turn down gifts from vendors, of course. It's unethical, to say the least, to tell either vendors or employees what employees will or should do in the privacy of their homes.

That includes, I argue, cases of rape, health, domestic violence or whatever other reason that a woman may need to take a Morning After pill. Even against what Father David Green argues.

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The rate of abortion doesn't go down when abortion becomes legally restrictive. It comes down when there is less of a need for it due to poverty and domestic violence. There are other reasons, but those are two of the biggest - and ones I think the pro-life movement, if it really wants to be considered Pro-Life imho, should concentrate on limiting.

Hobbled Lobbyists

This is what my train ride looks like. A cartoon.

Right now, on the train on the way to work, in the middle of flu season, a woman is hacking. Those near here have moved away for fear of contracting a sickness – on their way to work. I want to tell her she should just stay home. If it gets any worse, she should go to her doctor’s. But the truth is, she’s probably like me. She may not have sick days. She may not be able to afford to take a day off. And she probably doesn’t have an affordable way to contact her doctor.

Now, you would think that Christians would be the first to rise up and say, “That’s unjust. That is a travesty. That is not right. Someone allow this woman to go home and take care of herself. And, if not possible, for a highly-trained capable doctor to treat her without her losing her home.” But then you probably wouldn’t be the “fine Christians” responsible for writing or endorsing this piece by Liberty University’s Karen Fellow Swallows and published by Christianity Today, the flagship American Evangelical publication.

I don’t have enough energy or creativity to express my outrage at Christianity Today for publishing this blog post by Liberty U faculty on how the billionaire “good Christian” owners of Hobby Lobby are JUST LIKE St Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Or about how having them pay into and help provide insurance for their employees is JUST LIKE forcing Quakers to buy assault rifles from a gun dealer, or forcing an anti-porn professor to buy Hustler for her students. Of about how taking contraceptives is JUST LIKE getting an abortion.

No one should be forced to answer such stupid, anti-science, greedy-defending, ignorant bullshit. Jesus had nothing nice to say about the wealthy, about those who shore up their grains while their neighbors are starving, or those who refuse to pay their workers justly and abundantly*.

Rather, I’ll let you read a couple responses from Fred Clark, aka, Slacktivist – first on the martyr complex, and then on the company town that Hobby Lobby and its defenders are defending. And then there’s the abortion nonsense, which I think was perfectly covered by Love, Joy, Feminism a few months ago.

And there’s this wonderful succinct analogy, far more sensical (because it compares apples to apples, rather than to space craft, as Evangelical logic on this topic is wont to), by Rebecca Trotter that I found in the comments in the first Slacktivist blog:

[V]egans often hold very strong ideals regarding the immorality of using animals for food, products, research and the like. So does the vegan business owner have the right to decree that their employees not use their paychecks to purchase animal products? Can they offer health insurance which doesn't cover any medical treatment involving the use of animal products or animal research? I think any rational person would say no. The vegan can make their own choices and try to win others to their views. But they don't have the right to dictate that others conform to their practices by reason of their employment.

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*For a regular dose of what Jesus and the prophets had to say about wealth, see Commie Pinkos Wrote My Bible