Well, I was all set to throw my annual summertime bandana bash in my backyard, but now it looks like I’m going to have to boycott Hobby Lobby since they aren’t going to offer insurance to their female employees that pays for certain types of contraception. Dang. No, I’m not going to be able to make hats, skirts, neckties, scarves, shirts, belts, headbands, vests, tablecloths, diapers, whimsically wrapped candleholders, or anything else made from a variety of colorful and versatile bandanas sold at Hobby Lobby with instructions. And it’s too bad because, as Hobby Lobby’s website boasts, these creations are “Sew cute!” Especially when you make all that stuff and have it on little kids and every surface they encounter — all at the same time. It’s like a bandana nightmare.
Aleksandras Naryskin | Dreamstime.com
Whimsically wrapped candleholders that dangle in the air? I kid you “knot!”
All reproductive rights, privacy issues, discrimination, religious zealotry, Supreme Court madness, and hullabaloo in general over the court’s recent ruling to allow employers to pick and choose contraception options for its female employees aside, the question that keeps nagging me is this: Why did it have to be Hobby Lobby? Why did the United States Supreme Court have to potentially amend the constitution for a grotesque chain of stores that sells grotesque fabrics and grotesque glue guns so people can glue grotesque fabrics to grotesque objects to make them even more grotesque?
It seems like these discriminatory issues are always with companies that are, well, less than dripping with class. Remember the squabble about Cracker Barrel agreeing to an $8.7 million settlement to resolve all the lawsuits filed against them for segregating their African-American customers in the smoking section and denying them service? Again with the icky company. Cracker Barrel. I think I would rather eat some felt food from Hobby Lobby than even walk into a Cracker Barrel. I just can’t stand all that backwoods Americana. Why can’t the Supreme Court rule on companies like Saks or Bergdorf-Goodman so there might be a little splash of panache?
And because this new ruling by the Supreme Court allows this kind of discrimination based on Christian religious beliefs, the LGBT community is upset that it is opening the door for discrimination toward gay people. I hate to break it to you, world, but no self-respecting homosexual worth his or her weight in bandana patch wonderment would go to Hobby Lobby and create the store’s 49-step, do-it-yourself, felt animal farm unless it was for a very, very unusual occasion. At least I hope not. Same with their “Moss that Cross!” decorative crucifix, which, I gather, is made from stacking wooden crosses on top of each other and, for reasons known only to them, applying moss to them with a glue gun. Who thinks these things up? Does moss on a cross have some meaning to which I am not privy? Bendable “Oh, deer me!” foam antlers on a wall mount? Someone would risk falling on a pair of scissors for this? And you thought Armageddon was a myth.
Now, to backtrack just a bit and make a public confession that I’m not sure I’ve ever made: I, too, was once a “crafter.” Yes, during my youth, I became obsessed with candle making. But not just any candles. Mine were wax replicas of jarred food items for the most part. Yes, jelly jars, pickle jars, peanut butter jars, mustard jars — no glass vessel containing food in our refrigerator or pantry was safe from this process. The way it worked was that I would soak the label off the jar while keeping it intact and then fill the jar with the appropriately colored wax, then break the glass from around the hardened wax and place the label back on it and stick a wick in the top. I don’t even know what I did with these works of art, and it is as inexplicable to me now as to why anyone would go to Hobby Lobby and wrap a gourd with yarn and hang costume jewelry from it as a Thanksgiving decoration. What the hell was I thinking? No wonder I spent so much time alone as a kid. That middle school-aged hobby morphed into my more hippie-era crafting phase in high school, when sand candles were the rage. You took a big bucket of sand and dug a freeform hole in it with your hands and then filled the little crater with melted wax. Once cooled, you removed it from the sand and out came a very far-out, amoeba-shaped candle with a sandy surface and you hung them from the ceiling with macramé beaded sling-like holders. They were right there with the glow-in-the-dark music posters and incense burners, and the avocado-green shag carpet in my bedroom had so much sand in it that it was like being at the beach. I even used to dabble in the art of decoupage. Yes, that photo of Leon Russell wearing a big American flag hat was glued right onto my wastebasket and shellacked over until it was all but laminated. I could go on and on but I think that’s enough humiliation for now.
So, yes, the Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby on letting them decide women’s reproductive rights for them and that is no laughing matter. I just hope they don’t take their hot glue guns and do anything crazy with them. Glue guns and godliness should not go hand-in-hand.