Neil Gorsuch Thinks Your Boss Should Deny You Your Slut Pills. Yay 'Religious Liberty'!

This is Neil. Neil sucks.

Did you watch America's lowest rated new reality TV show last night, "Donald Trump Picks Out Thing?" We heard it was super boring, and anyway, we were watching a real show about a real president, called "The West Wing," so we were too busy. But in the debut episode, Trump picked out a thing called "Neil Gorsuch" to put on the Supreme Court, and there was a big reveal and America was orgasmic when Trump gave Gorsuch the rose, just kidding, nobody was watching.

So now the question is What Shall Our Democrats Do? Shall they filibuster Gorsuch to death for "principles," because it should be Merrick Garland's seat, or as a display of Democratic tail feathers, to show Trump and Mitch McConnell what obstruction really looks like? Should they let this one through since, meh, it's just going to restore the Court to the ideological balance it had when Dead Scalia was applesauce-ing all over the place, and then wait to REALLY fight on the next one, assuming Trump gets a "next one"? Should they do a quid pro quo and say "OK, we will do this one, as long as next time you give us one WE LIKE?" (Seriously, that is an argument we saw, and it is too stupid for us to try to find and link for you, so just trust us that some dumb idiot said it.)

There are a couple articles out there, from smart people like Slate's Mark Joseph Stern and former Obama administration official Neal Katyal in the New York Times  , about how Neil Gorsuch is really not the worst thing that could have happened, that he's a smart, good judge who, though very conservative, is not an ideological crazy-pants culture warrior. He also shows an independent streak that could mean he won't just reflexively rule in favor of whatever "President" Trump's taint is itching about that day. We note those arguments, as they are reasoned and circumspect.

BUT CAN WE REMIND YOU THAT THIS IS ONE OF THE HOBBY LOBBY JUDGES?

One more time.

CAN WE REMIND YOU THAT THIS IS ONE OF THE HOBBY LOBBY JUDGES?

 Ahem . Slate's Stern notes that Supreme Court Nominee "Neil" is one of those dudes who seems to believe just about any kind of discrimination should be legal, as long as some white American Christian somewhere is feeling butthurt about how having to abide by the same laws as everybody else:

When the 10th Circuit ruled in the Hobby Lobby case, Gorsuch wrote a concurring opinion explaining why religious corporations and their owners must be permitted to impose their beliefs on employees. His broad vision of religious liberty includes the right of employers to deny workers access to contraception through their own insurance plans if employers believe contraception to be evil.

This is whiny ass titty baby religious conservatism as its whiniest. It suggests that Hobby Lobby, the store with the dress patterns and the glue and the glitter, is a born again Christian who REALLY hates abortion, and that the corporation, in exercising its religious beliefs, is also dumb and thinks birth control causes abortion, therefore the ladies who ring up the pipe cleaners and the scrapbooking materials shouldn't be able to have their birth control covered under their company-provided health insurance, WHICH THEY PAY FOR OUT OF THEIR PAY PACKAGE, IT IS NOT EVEN HOBBY LOBBY'S MONEY ANYMORE AT THAT POINT.

But wait, there's more!

Gorsuch also insisted that the government could not require religious nonprofits to fill out paperwork exempting them from the contraceptive mandate. Signing documents to opt out of the mandate, Gorsuch wrote, made nonprofits complicit in something they found “sinful.”

Oh yay! Do you remember those cases (which have made it to the Supreme Court and won ) involving religious nonprofits and dumb nuns who say it will make them burn in hell if they have to fill out a form that makes them exempt from the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate, because the form allows women to procure their slut pills from a third party provider? Yes, FILLING OUT FORMS IS SINFUL, even if those forms allow you to get out of sinning, because if you fill out the forms, then those ladies are going to get their slut pills. Judge Gorsuch agrees with those idiot nuns who refuse to fill out forms*.

(*n.b., we usually like nuns. Those nuns are terrible.)

As far as gay butt stuff (it always comes back to that), Gorsuch doesn't have as thick of a record, but, as Stern points out, his Hobby Lobby slut pill beliefs are the same "religious freedom" beliefs that say conservative Christian cake bakers and dress makers and porn fluffers shouldn't have to provide their services to gays if they have a Sincerely Held Religious Belief that it would make Jesus cry if they did. (Notably, the Human Rights Campaign has already come out against Gorsuch's nomination.)

This is a stupid judicial "philosophy," and it comes straight from the convoluted fever dreams of Religious Right America, and not, as they would like you to believe, from any good tradition of American jurisprudence.

So, for the religious liberty thing alone, Democrats should just die on this hill, because why the fuck not. All Senate Democrats are really doing right now is showing the GABILLIONS OF LIBERALS MARCHING UP AND DOWN THE STREETS which ones of y'all we should fight for and with, and which ones we should primary like a common Eric Cantor, OH YEAH WE SAID IT, LIBERAL TEA PARTY IS HERE AND OUR SIGNS ARE SPELLED CORRECTLY.

Also, that's Merrick Garland's seat and we'll be just fine with eight Supreme Court justices, because fuck it we said so.

[ Slate ]