Advertisement
Letter: Entitled to be ridiculous in our own way
Op-Ed · February 09, 2017


The U.S. Senate’s questioning of President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, will soon start in Washington and also occur from sea to shining sea, in the heartland, and in the individual hearts of some of us.


To wit, Judge Gorsuch held in his judgment on the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores that on the grounds of an employer’s religious freedom such an employer was entitled to withhold compensatory payment for employee’s coverage of birth-control contraception because the employer thought it sinful.

How stands Gorsuch on an equally devoted vegetarian employer having a right to withhold any portion of compensation to an employee that would go to the purchase of meat, or a teetotaler withholding from the purchase of alcoholic spirits?

One who finds such comparisons ridiculous had best understand how ridiculous one person’s religious convictions can appear to another and why matters involving the exercise of one’s own conscience had best be kept to the burden of oneself and out of the law of the land in which each of us is entitled to be ridiculous in our own special way.

Sam Osborne

West Branch