Readers React: Hobby Lobby ruling’s next victims: LGBT workers?

To the editor: Plaudits to Michael Hiltzik for highlighting how the U.S. Supreme Court’s outrageous Hobby Lobby decision may abet religious zealots’ discrimination against gays and transgenders in the business world. (“Hobby Lobby’s harvest: A religious exemption for LGBT discrimination?,” July 16)

Hiltzik’s telling parallels with mid-20th century racism ring true. For pious segregationists, the 1896 decision Plessy vs. Ferguson served to keep public schools segregated until Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954.

That epic reversal set the stage for civil rights legislation enacted during the next decade, which served to counter persistent racism.

Hiltzik’s apt insights suggest that the 5-4 Hobby Lobby decision won’t, like the Plessy ruling, endure for decades. All that’s needed is one more high court justice who favors equal rights over faith-based discrimination.

Devra Mindell, Santa Monica

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To the editor: From the space Hiltzik has given the Hobby Lobby decision, one would think that women have been rendered shoeless and burka-clad.

In fact, the decision affects an extremely small number of women, and even then does no more than relegate them to the dark ages of women’s healthcare typified by the Clinton era and the first years of the Obama presidency, when this particular contraception benefit was not required to be provided for “free.”

Hiltzik, like others, foresees the slippery slope. However, that slope is inherent in every decision ever made by government.

Barry Nichols, Los Angeles

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To the editor: On Monday, President Obama issued an executive order barring LGBT discrimination by federal contractors. To protect their organizations from feeling “very uncomfortable” and to perpetuate “diversity of opinion,” Pastor Rick Warren and other religious leaders, in a July 1 letter to Obama, argue their right to discriminate against the LGBT community while still receiving federal (taxpayer) funding

There is a disgraceful hypocrisy lurking in a request by Christian church leaders for religious exemption from an anti-discrimination rule. I don’t recall “if you’re comfortable with it” qualifying any of Jesus Christ’s commandments.

Ellen Chavez Kelley, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: Hiltzik’s excellent column was deficient in only one respect. He failed to ask Warren or Father Larry Snyder where in the fundamental documents of their faith they find their God commanding them to discriminate against LGBT people in terms of employment. Are they discriminating on religious grounds, moral grounds, or do they want to discriminate because they’re simply bigoted?

Additionally, if their consciences won’t allow them to treat LGBT people equally, they’re always free to say “no” to the taxpayers’ money.

John Gibson, Los Angeles