It's like if someone asked "what makes an apple fall from a tree?" There's one post about basic physics 101, followed by dozens of posts about how x= 1/2gt^2 is just an approximation so we should ignore it and instead debate whether gravity is caused by God or invisible gnomes.
An apt description, given that later physics classes include how wrong physics 101 is.
So not only is the government being asked to respect their beliefs regardless of their sincerity, they are being asked to respect their beliefs regardless of their factual accuracy.
People also seem to be taking for granted the fact that the business owners actually hold these beliefs. If an exception is made for sincerely held beliefs, I can't see how government could possibly determine what beliefs a person "really" holds, or how that process could be less of government overreach than what it was trying to prevent.
The key is that the company is creating the risky situation and putting you in it; if you did not work for the company, you would not have that risk.
The company isn't putting you in the risky situation. You did by agreeing to work for them.
Now, in contrast, if you work for a company that refuses to pay for your insurance, you're uninsured, and if you stay home, you're exactly as uninsured. Working for the company does not make you worse off than you were beforehand. Bitterroot, bLatch, and I have already explained this several times. I'm having a hard time making it any simpler, so can you please tell me exactly which part of it you still cannot understand?
This is an incredibly key distinction, and I'm amazed at how many people in this thread don't seem to comprehend this.
Your examples keep having me go back to the employee safety regulations. If everything you said were true, you should have no problem allowing employers to ignore those rules on ethical grounds. Despite your claims to the contrary, if employment is truly a voluntary contract, then employers aren't causing harm by not providing that safety, since the worker is the one who makes the final decision.
The reason increasing potential for harm is "actively causing harm" is because in x% of the instances in question, there is harm being done. If your policy has a 10% potential for harm, that means that in 10% of the situations there will be harm done. This means that by increasing the potential, you're actively causing harm in x% of those situations.
Not having proper preventative health care increases the potential for harm.
Your example is just a trickier way of making the same logical mistake that FoxBlade keeps making. It's not correct to conflate "actively causing harm" and "refusing to confer a benefit."
I'm just not seeing how you are determining what "actively causing harm" is if you include potential for harm.
Should we ever respect people's ethical objections? If the government forced employers to pay for gay conversion therapy, should employers with ethical objections not be allowed to opt out? If the government forced all farmers to grow GMO crops, should ethical objectors be required to comply?
Yes, they should.
The correct avenue for dealing with an unethical or overreaching law is to get rid of the law, not provide special exceptions to it that have no practical reason. I have to pay taxes for things I find morally objectionable. Rastafarians shouldn't get special exemptions for drug laws, we should modify the drug laws to be reasonable.
Your analogy is bad, because ignoring safety regulations actively causes harm to the employee, and leaves the employee in a worse position than if they were not employed. Refusing to pay for insurance leaves them in no worse a position than if they were not employed. This is similar to the distinction between forbidding something, and simply refusing to pay for that thing. One is actively causing harm, the other is simply refusing to confer a benefit.
A lack of safety regulations don't actively harm people. It creates the potential for harm to the employee, much like not having proper preventative medical care.
A better analogy would be if the federal government mandated that all employers provide lunch that includes meat, but a vegetarian employer objected on legitimate religious or ethical grounds. Should a vegetarian be forced to buy meat for his or her employees?
How is allowing people to ignore the rules they don't like at all tenable?
Genuine question. In what way is what Hobby Lobby attempting to do different from ignoring employee safety regulations because they believe they are immoral?
Obviously you can't read, otherwise you would have seen I said IGNORE THE LANDS. Everyone knows lands are what put prices up in decks. We are talking all the staples, not just lands.
"If you ignore the thing that makes me wrong, I'm right."
If WotC's official policy is that showing off your asscrack in a tournament is ok, but drawing attention to it is not (and is punishable by years of suspension), what exactly do you expect them to do to you?
WotC never indicated that this is their policy. You are reading too much into it.
18 months is in keeping with previous offenses of this nature. Previously, someone had uploaded pictures of tournament goers in an attempt to ridicule them, and he also got 18 months. Why the outcry against this clearly defined and equally applied DCI rule?
I still don't understand. He is punished for doing someone legal. He didn't show their faces nor did he say any names. 18 months is too long. Very disappointed in the selective punishment.
Not legal by DCI rules. And what is selective about this?
So it seems that the initial report of a 6 month ban was unfounded. Helen Bergeot posted this message about the incident, and the DCI suspended members page has been updated.
Absolutely not. Baseball and sporting events already get far more consideration and stature than they deserve. A private organization like the MLB should not be getting this kind of recognition.
Take a look at the national holidays the United States has. They include historical events of great political importance. Things like the founding of the country or memorializing victims of warfare or celebrating the civil rights movement. A popular hobby doesn't belong on this list.
What people don't seem to be getting is that it doesn't matter what the victims were doing. It doesn't matter if what they were doing was something that needed to be called out. The manner in which attention was brought to it was not appropriate.
The correct avenue for dealing with an unethical or overreaching law is to get rid of the law, not provide special exceptions to it that have no practical reason. I have to pay taxes for things I find morally objectionable. Rastafarians shouldn't get special exemptions for drug laws, we should modify the drug laws to be reasonable.
Genuine question. In what way is what Hobby Lobby attempting to do different from ignoring employee safety regulations because they believe they are immoral?
Looks like 18 months. Even better.
Take a look at the national holidays the United States has. They include historical events of great political importance. Things like the founding of the country or memorializing victims of warfare or celebrating the civil rights movement. A popular hobby doesn't belong on this list.