Jesus Wept.

Here they come again. This time it's another self-righteous team of birth control opponents off to convince the Supreme Court that "religion" gives them the right to discriminate against their fellow citizens and ignore the law.

The argument in a nutshell: if Hobby Lobby, or Wal-Mart, or any other corporation "thinks" Jesus hates birth control, they should not be required to provide insurance covering birth control to employees who need or want it.

We've heard similar arguments in the past . . . though heretofore always claimed for individuals, not the legal fictions we call corporations.

In my youth, for example, those who believed God thought racial segregation was right and proper "reserved the right to refuse service to anyone."

They can't do that any more, though their right to believe whatever nonsense they want to believe on religious grounds is protected.

Now comes Hobby Lobby and others, claiming that discrimination based on special insight into the mind of God is not only right and proper, but that corporations as well as individuals may engage in it.

In essence, they claim the same religion-based "right" to discrimination for corporations as their long discredited racist, sexist and homophobic predecessors claimed for individuals.

Corporations, of course, aren't "people." They are legal constructs, no more and no less. Jesus didn't die on the cross for Wal-Mart or Hobby Lobby. Corporations may not partake of the sacraments.

And smaller corporations, those owned by a single person, or by a perversely single-minded group of people, still have to obey the law.

That's the price they pay when they ask the rest of us, though our governments, to grant them the special legal privileges and protections of incorporation.

If an individual wants to discriminate against their fellow citizens on the basis of religious prejudice they have every right to do so, providing they are willing to face the legal consequences.

Corporations have no such rights to "religious" freedom . . . and we, as a society, should not grant it to them.