No Happy Endings

Before I begin, I want you to look at this picture.

Victims, left to right: Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.

Remember these faces.  Imagine the successful, vibrant, endearing qualities of these three young college students.  They are not murderers.  They are not our enemy.  They are our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, and family.  They are the people that make a difference, for the better, in America.

Oh, yes, and they’re Muslims.  Well, they were, before they were coldly murdered by Craig Stephen Hicks, in Chapel Hill, NC, yesterday.  The jury is still out regarding his true motivation to kill the trio (an interaction supposedly deriving from a parking dispute), but his background and his known bias all point to one thing: a deep-seated hatred, and fear, of the followers of Islam – a hatred that has been perpetuated by the hands of the United States government, mass media, and social networking.  Sorry to say, he’s far from the only one.

Years of the United States’ “war on terror” have eroded the public view of Islam.  Numerous terroristic acts all over the globe have been carried out by Muslim extremists, which in part led to this “war”.  As such, we’ve sent our soldiers to fight in regions of the world where Islam is the religion of the majority.  Fuzzy logic and a clash of cultures turned Islam into the face of our enemies, and the two are no longer differentiated.  Citizens cling to this, and blame these atrocities, and the subsequent loss of lives, not on the mad men who perpetrate them, but on the claimed religious core of their disjointed, bastardized beliefs.

Further exacerbating the situation are tactics used by governmental agencies to supposedly root out terrorism, such as the passage and abuse of the Patriot act, TSA discriminatory search practices, hundreds of cases of entrapment perpetuated by the FBI against Muslims, and even the mapping and tracking of Muslim communities by the NYPD.  All these avenues, and many more, have been used to normalize the practice of Islamophobia.

The disease spreads like wildfire on social media, where tensions run high on a text-filled, soulless platform; trolls flourish, fear and misinformation prevail, bigotry knows no bounds, and sheep blindly follow the wolf.  Sensational headlines, pushed by fear-mongering news anchors and publications, invoke irrational thoughts in their subscribers by emphasizing buzzwords.  Muslim.  Islam.  Extremist.  Jihad.  The religion is gutted, and twisted.  Its followers are demonized.  Neilson ratings rise.

And so evolves the cycle of bigotry, and an escalation to the breaking point.  Death threats and ill-wishes for Muslims in general abound.  Incidents arise such as in Europe, where dozens of mosques have become the target of vandals using firebombs, guns, and even pig heads.  Three innocent Muslim college students are murdered, seemingly for discriminatory reasons.  Tensions run high.  The media ignores the signs, underreports the facts, and perpetuates the propaganda.  Government officials stand idly by, and say nothing.  Thousands of innocent Muslims are oppressed by both government forces and non-Muslim citizens, all across the globe.

It’s a pattern of escalation we’ve seen once before in recent history that’s hard to ignore – the implications of which are frightening, to say the least.  Much like anti-Semitism spread far and wide in the 1930’s, anti-Muslim sentiment has taken a stronghold in the 21^st century.  Sadly, it’s just a matter of time before we reach the tipping point: Islam’s Kristallnacht.

I don’t foresee a happy ending to this story, either.

Hold Me Closer, Hobby Lobby

In a direct hit to the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka Obamacare), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision on Monday allowing “closely held” for-profit companies to refuse to cover contraceptives via their insurance programs if they hold religious objections to these sorts of fancy, first-world-sponsored creations of the devil.

As noted in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent of the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case, unknown is the breadth of reach this decision could have on future “religiously based” employer mandates; whether this will allow employers to encroach upon human rights (denying life-saving coverage such as blood transfusions), or force their employees to perform actions against their will (say, mandatorily perform salat five times a day, because, Allah).

Also unknown is how “closely held” the company must be in order for the company to act upon their so-called “objections.” If you bear hug the shit out of it, does that count? Also, who’s “objections” are being voiced, exactly?

So a Priest, a Rabbi, and a Satanist go in on a company…

The joke would be funnier if the implications weren’t so frightening. Thanks, SCOTUS, you earned that 30% approval rating.

Current Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Feel their power. Heed to their glory.

However, what is known is that the protection afforded to employees by making mandatory a certain level of coverage has now been undermined. The worst part of this debacle is that people are failing to recognize that this is a public health issue, not a religious one.

As noted in a number of articles, birth control does much more than simply preventing pregnancy. There are other aspects of taking birth control that are medically relevant to the health and well-being of women, such as reducing the risk of cancer, quelling the discomfort of menstruation, and balancing hormones.

It’s not about sex. It’s not about faith. It’s about health.

Ginsburg acknowledged that in her dissent. “What the Court must decide is not ‘the plausibility of a religious claim…’ but whether accommodating that claim risks depriving others of rights accorded them by the laws of the United States.”

Denying coverage of contraceptives, or any other legitimate medical need, leads to a lack of accessibility. Ever check to see the original cost of medications your doctor has prescribed you? It’s a hell of a lot cheaper through insurance. Wages aren’t exactly on the rise, by any means. And Washington has yet to spearhead any in-depth, fruitful inquiry into the high medical costs that plague the health care industry, let alone talk about the issue.

The Supreme Court majority royally fucked up here when they fell for the religion ploy. I place the blame, and any subsequent fallout, squarely on their shoulders – make no mistake about it. Hobby Lobby just so happened to be the good, God-fearing Christians who brought the case forward. You know, the same ones who order and stock cheaper and more profitable products produced in China by slave workers forced to live in the squalid settings of the poverty-laden repression they face every day. Those ones.

Religious beliefs should be and are protected, but to what end? The opinion issued by Justice Scalia attacked the dissent as questioning the faith of the organization. This is the same man who also said, when issuing the ruling on Employment Divison v. Smith (1990), “To permit [that a person may defy neutral laws of general applicability, such as public accommodation laws, as an expression of religious belief]would make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

So a company can establish blatantly discriminatory practices based on “faith,” but individuals don’t meet the standard? Companies like Hobby Lobby make their profits off the backs of the same people they’re disenfranchising. Worker’s rights are now effectively dead.

The oft-mentioned Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) doesn’t even apply here, except to discredit the Supreme’s own majority ruling. The purpose of the law, passed in 1993 as a direct response to the above mentioned case, was to establish an overriding of a general law if it was found to be unreasonably burdensome to a person’s exercise of their religion. I see no mention of “companies” made, let alone the connection between offering a choice and forcing one’s self to exercise that choice.

There is no burden, plain and simple. There are only discriminatory tactics that are working against a sound public health policy.

I don’t agree with a lot of the ACA, but if you don’t see the flaws in this ruling, you must really hate women more than you love God.