“No gods—no masters” reads a full-page ad attacking the Hobby Lobby decision by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, in the same newspaper that once banned an ad for being anti-Muslim: the New York Times.
The propaganda piece attempts to argue that the Supreme Court’s decision had something to do with the 5-4 majority being “all-male, all-Roman Catholic”. The ad goes on to accuse the Supreme Court majority of siding with “zealous fundamentalists who equate contraception with abortion.”
“RFRA radically redefines ‘religious freedom,'” the ad claims in reference to the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which passed unanimously in the House and passed 97-3 in the Senate before being signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
The ad also commits a factual error in asserting that the Hobby Lobby ruling allows employers to “decide what kind of birth control an employee can use,” falsely equating selective coverage with actually dictating what procedures employees may engage in privately.
Journalist David Harsanyi of The Federalist pointed out that the Times‘ decision to run the ad reveals a double standard compared to 2012, when the paper “rejected a full-page anti-Islam advertisement submitted by anti-Muslim activists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.”
At the time, according to the Media Research Center, the Times claimed Geller and Spencer’s ad might inflame sensitivities over Afghanistan.
By contrast, the secularist law group’s ad in the Times twice mentions the Catholic faith of Justices Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Kennedy and Thomas in an accusatory tone.
Is there a double standard for anti-religion ads at the New York Times? Share your thoughts in the comment section below, and view the ad itself here.
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