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Love \u2018em or hate \u2018em, but at least do so based upon sound reasoning.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Coming To a Town Near You<\/strong><\/p>\n It was recently announced that retailer Hobby Lobby is building a store in Traverse City.<\/p>\n Within seconds of that announcement came the negative comments regarding Hobby Lobby\u2019s right to exist, and Traverse City\u2019s despicable choice of allowing Hobby Lobby to set up shop.\u00a0 There were repeated indignant declarations of refusing to shop at Hobby Lobby due to things like religion, women\u2019s rights, and reproductive freedom.\u00a0 However, as the day went on, the positive comments and welcoming statements began to outweigh the negative.<\/p>\n All of this is of no surprise, and is actually one of the beautiful things about a free-market capitalist system.<\/p>\n In the interest of complete transparency, I don\u2019t shop at Hobby Lobby.\u00a0 I\u2019m just not a bolted fabric, faux flowers, macram\u00e9 and vases kinda guy, and I simply cannot get excited about a sale on miniature garden gnomes.\u00a0 Give me a bike shop, a home-improvement center or a music store any day.\u00a0 But I digress – back to my original purpose.\u00a0 To the fervently indignant folks who choose to publicly \u201ctake a stand;\u201d at the very least, let\u2019s all be crystal clear (and hopefully reasonable) about why we do what we do.<\/p>\n The \u201cIssue(s)\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n In response to one man\u2019s expressed appreciation that Hobby Lobby was run by Christian people, one woman wrote: \u201cExcept most Christians are asshats I’d rather not be around.\u201d\u00a0 Of note – the US Census reports that over 75% of Americans identify themselves as Christians.\u00a0 Therefore, by her own admission this woman thinks that at least 38% of Americans are asshats.\u00a0 That seems a bit overly condemnatory.<\/p>\n Another woman wrote: \u201cI definitely won\u2019t be shopping at Hobby Lobby due to the owner\u2019s policies toward women and health care.\u201d\u00a0 I think it\u2019s safe to presume that this is based (at least in part) upon Hobby Lobby\u2019s very public position with respect to certain forms of contraception.<\/p>\n Pertinent Facts and Relevant Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n For the record, the US FDA has approved 20 birth control methods, 16 to which Hobby Lobby has no objection, including the most effective and most commonly\/widely-used methods.\u00a0 Hobby Lobby and their employee health insurance plan support those 16 options because they believe doing so does not violate their US Constitutionally-protected religious freedoms.\u00a0 In 2014, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby\u2019s position.\u00a0 In addition, I think we can all agree that \u201chealth care\u201d involves considerably more than just contraception, and I am unaware of any other aspects of common health care to which Hobby Lobby objects.<\/p>\n Hobby Lobby has a workforce of 34,000 people, 69% of whom are women.\u00a0 Why would over 23,000 American women willingly choose to work at and support the mission of a company that is allegedly anti-woman?\u00a0 Of equal importance, I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of Hobby Lobby customers are women, to the tune of more than $4 billion in revenue in 2017.\u00a0 Again, if Hobby Lobby is so terrible, why would independent, free-thinking American woman give to Hobby Lobby $billions of their hard-earned income?<\/p>\n Take an Educated Stand<\/strong><\/p>\n We are all encouraged to shop where we wish, just as we are free to be angry with whom we wish.\u00a0 However, it is in our collective best interest to be rational and factually-driven in our reasoning, especially in this day and age of what seems to be an agenda-driven mainstream media offering spin from every direction.\u00a0 We need to dig deeper to learn more, increasing our knowledge beyond that which is being reported by those with whom we are comfortable.\u00a0 If we\u2019re going to be part of the discussion, let\u2019s at least be erudite in our passion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Love \u2018em or hate \u2018em, but at least do so based upon sound reasoning. Coming To a Town Near You It was recently announced that retailer Hobby Lobby is building a store in Traverse City. Within seconds of that announcement came the negative comments regarding Hobby Lobby\u2019s right to exist, and Traverse City\u2019s despicable choice … Continue reading “Hobby Lobby”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-commentary-and-perspective"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kyledwilson.com\/davidwilsonupnorth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}