It was probably last year on this date that I wrote about my looking over my shoulder as I turned 68.  My father and both my grandfathers died at that age, so it didn't seem a propitious anniversary.  A number of readers responded with their own superstitious unlucky numbers.  When I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at age 65, I thought, Well, so much for having to worry about being 68.  But I just keep hanging in there, and today, as France and I celebrate our birthdays, I have a new reason for not having to worry about being 68: it's in the past. 

The ramifications of the Hobby Lobby/Conestoga case continue to spread.  Although Justice Alito wrote that it was a narrow ruling, by the next day, the Court had sent down orders broadening the implications to include all contraceptive devices.  That was followed by the Wheaton decision excepting the Christian college from even filling our the paperwork for a religious exemption. Alito's decision couldn't have been based on precedence, supposedly beloved by conservatives, because precedence was not on the majority's side.  Instead, Alito cited nearly 140 times the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed with near unanimity by the Congress and signed into law by Pres. Clinton in 1993.  Still, a law with a name as blatantly hypocritical as RFRA might have given liberals a second thought at what the consequences were going to be. 

The five justices in the Hobby Lobby majority were all conservative and all male.  They were also all Christian.  Does anyone seriously think that if the petitioners were Muslim or Native American, the Court would have come to the same conclusion?  And not only Christian, but all five are Catholic, for whom contraception seems to have become, after fifty years, a new cause celèbre.

The ripples don't end there, however.  ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, designed to protect that LGBT community in the workplace is the next logical target of those with "sincere," if discriminatory, religious beliefs.  ENDA passed the Senate, but in order to get the votes of enough conservative Republicans, it carved out exceptions for non-profit religious institutions, such as hospitals or universities, which would still be allowed to discriminate.  The bill, like so many, is stalled in the House.  But now that SCOTUS has blurred, if not eliminated, the distinction between for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, ENDA has potentially been eviscerated.  Liberal groups like the ACLU and Lambda Legal Defense have withdrawn support, fearing the bill makes things worse by codifying the right of corporations to discriminate at will--as long as they're sincere and do so in the name of religion.