Title VII, the civil rights act which prohibits employers from discriminating against an employee based on religion has one exception. Care to guess what that exception is? Religious organizations. Religious organizations are not required to violate the organization's religious beliefs in employee practices. This has…

You're following trends with your beard and slayer shirt. So, by your own definition, you're a hipster of a stripe. A metal hipster perhaps?

It's really obvious that you don't know the difference between denotation and connotation. Hint: A dictionary definition isn't the final authority on the meaning of a term.

Those aren't mutually exclusive categories. Much like nerd rock and pop aren't mutually exclusive categories, which is why Rivers Cuomo always embraced the term "pop music" about Weezer. Plenty of soul singers like Otis Redding and Diana Ross were also very much pop musicians. Which is okay.

Do you get this upset about stadium rock, or indie artists who are putting a lot of time and effort into maintaining a particular aesthetic so as to make money off of a particular audience? I'm just wondering where this oddly specific chip on your shoulder is coming from.

Religious organizations, of which the Catholic church is, are exempted by the Title VII provision for religious discrimination. Which is good, because that means that a UU church is under no obligation to keep a southern baptist employee who rants about how gays are going to hell.

Except federal courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, and even a Mormon gym in regards to Title VII exemptions. I mean, if you have examples of court cases where the Title VII exemption wasn't upheld for a religious employer, I'm more than willing to read the briefs.

It isn't flouting the law if it is encoded in the law. The exception exists to avoid conflicts like say, a person working at a mosque who doesn't believe they need to keep halal and brings baconators into lunch every day. Maybe eating baconators is part of their affiliations and beliefs, but it doesn't mean that the…

What a commercial entity does in regards to employees and what a religious organization does, are two very different things. Which is why Title VII makes exceptions for such organizations.

You're referring to Title VII, but you don't seem aware that religious organizations are exempt from Title VII. Which means that A&E, since they do commerce, could not fire Duck Dynasty Dude based on his religious affiliation, but the Catholic church can.

What they should do and what they should be legally required to do are very different things. Some would argue that A&E should fire that Duck Dynasty guy whose name I refuse to waste my energy on remembering the name of. Some people think that an employer shouldn't have the power to fire somebody for their…

That's a good point, and complicates the matter considerably. However, it complicates the matter in a lot of ways, including the firing of people whose values don't represent the organization's values, viz a viz A&E's (former?) values of inclusiveness for LGBT people.

Honestly, if the employee in some way goes against the employer's values, then why not? That's the exact reasoning I (and many of the people who are replying to me) had when approaching the topic of A&E firing the Duck Dynasty guy whose name I refuse to remember.

Nobody forces anybody to work for the Catholic church. I think it is within their rights to not pay for medicines or procedures that are against their faith. The solution isn't to force them to do that, it's to promote a public option that we should have had decades ago.

I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of employees of the Catholic church are laity or non-Catholics. That's why nuns are chiming in, because their employees are the ones who will be covered by (and use) this coverage.

You say you're of two minds, but I think both are compatible. Allow religious organizations to not pay for things which are against their faith and, instead, give Americans a public option like we should have had when Clinton was in office.

That's not really a fair comparison. There's a huge difference between paying for a thing that is against your faith and hiring a person who engages in something against your faith which you do not have to financially support explicitly.

That's sort of what the court does. If it were a body which just went along with the laws that the rest of the government apparatus passed, then sodomy and miscegenation might still be illegal.

Anyone up for forming a religion that states that one is not allowed to employ or provide any benefits or assistance to someone of the christian faith?

I don't think the nuns mentioned in the article are going to be purchasing birth control for themselves, but are concerned about the Catholic church buying birth control for the numerous employees of Catholic schools, universities, and charity organizations who are non-Catholics or members of the laity who take no vow…