Inspired by the Supreme Court's decision that economic entities are not only persons, but persons with religion and deserving of all the protections of conscience we don't defend in little people like workers-- because they should just be darn grateful they have a job--your writer has invented a new word, Corporationstein.
Like Frankenstein's monster, Corporationstein is sewn together from various parts. Owners, stockholders, bought politicians and the humble folk who enjoy the gift of the jobs created.
Your writer is not against corporations on principle, in fact she works for one. Legal structures have their uses. But this Supreme Court, in decision after decision, has changed a business fiction into a person who has Constitutional rights, can vote with its dollar, and now can require all in its domain to conform to its religious restrictions. Will Corporationstein go to Heaven some day? Is there a special place in Heaven, like the Corporate Lounge in the airport, where Corporationstein doesn't have to mingle with the carnal?
Only if it's good? Not like Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its raging liberalism (is that an oxymoron)?
I woke up thinking of a Junot Diaz story called Monstro where the folly and arrogance of the wealthy unleash a ravenous hybrid monster that consumes people. Oh, wait-- it's us that are the consumers. Corporationstein is a person, who has faith and creates jobs. Unlike ordinary humans whose place it is to gratefully accept jobs and consume more.
I have heard the religious claims of the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby, compared to the stance of conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War.
I was a teenager then. The CO's faced prison where they were labeled unpatriotic cowards, they were able to get alternative service if lucky-- and assigned to the work no one else wanted, or they went into exile in Canada. This is what happens to human beings who take a stand for their beliefs.
Corporationstein does the reverse. It tells the Court what it wants, and then forces all in its power to take the consequences of its practice of religion.
Selective practice is fine. Hobby Lobby enjoys a profitable relationship with China, a country that shares its practice of interfering with women's reproductive rights but with forced abortion rather than denial of contraception. It also invests in some pharmaceutical companies that make the contraceptives it claims are morally wrong. Religion is a mystery, and even more so when practiced by a 'person' whose very existence is an act of faith.