The Christian Right Is Wrong

Shortly before the Labor Day weekend, a federal judge in Kentucky ordered the Rowan County clerk incarcerated for violating his orders. Five days later, he released her.

The judge found that the clerk, Kim Davis, interfered with the ability of same-sex couples in her county to marry by refusing to issue them applications for marriage licenses. Davis argued that she was following her conscience, which is grounded in a well-known Christian antipathy to same-sex marriages, which, in turn, is protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Here is the backstory.

Davis is the clerk of Rowan County, Ky. Among her duties as county clerk is the issuance of applications for marriage licenses. When she assumed office, she took an oath to administer her duties consistent with the U.S. Constitution. Her job with respect to licenses is ministerial: issuing documents to those who legally qualify for them and filing the documents when they are returned to her.

I would have removed her authority to issue marriage license applications and assigned it to others in the Kentucky state government, and directed them to issue the applications in accordance with the law. That would have kept Davis free and her conscience clear, and permitted those in Rowan County to get married to whom they choose.

What about the St. Thomas More argument: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first”? That is not relevant here. More was tried, convicted and executed for his personal refusal to accept a heretical doctrine: that the monstrous King Henry VIII was somehow the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England. Even More admitted that one must do all one can to avoid martyrdom, even leaving public office knowing that one’s successor will do what one has refused.

The Free Exercise Clause guarantees individuals the lawful ability to practice their religion free from government interference. It does not permit those in government to use their offices to deny the rights of those who reject their beliefs. That is the lesson for Kim Davis.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.