Satanists To Take Advantage Of Supreme Court Decision

“The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.”

Those are the words of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, after the Court made it's ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. That decision allowed employer's to refuse the insurance requirements imposed by the Affordable Care Act (giving Hobby Lobby permission to refuse to allow the insurance it provides for its employees to contain coverage for contraceptives). The court ruling was that the religious freedom of that corporation trumped federal law, and that the company's owners had the right to impose their religious views on their employee's (regardless of the employee's own views).

The minority on the court (and many other Americans) disagreed, believing this decision could open the door to challenge of many other federal laws and regulations. And they were probably right. Almost immediately after the ruling, muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay filed suit claiming the government had no right to prevent them from engaging in communal prayers during Ramadan.

The Satanic Temple is now filing suit against laws requiring "informed consent" before an abortion can be done. Those "informed consent" laws

require women seeking abortions to be subjected to state-mandated informational materials that that the Temple claims are often false or misleading. The so-called “pro-life” materials attempt to link abortions to breast and ovarian cancers and infer that having an abortion leads to “post abortion syndrome,” a mental condition that has not been recognized as valid by the medical community.

And the satanists are right. The materials that pro-life legislators have required are not scientific. They are just propaganda designed to put pressure on women at a difficult time in their lives -- pressure that neither those legislators nor anyone else has the right to impose. The Satanic Temple says their beliefs are based on scientific principles, and therefore those "informed consent" laws violate the basic tenets of their religion. They want the adherents of their religion to be able to bypass those "informed consent" regulations.

I'm not a member of the Satanic Temple (or any other religious organization), but I agree with the position the satanists have taken on this matter. If the owners of Hobby Lobby can ignore the law because of their religious beliefs, then the satanists should be able to do the same thing (and ignore the baseless propaganda the government is trying to force upon them.

Justice Ginsburg was right. The Supreme Court created a religious minefield with their Hobby Lobby decision. And the lawsuits filed by the muslims and satanists are just the first of many future lawsuits -- and if the First Amendment has any meaning regarding religious freedom, then all religions must be treated the same (and be able to ignore the laws they don't agree with). This was just a bad court decision, and it needs to be overturned as quickly as possible.