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Kim Davis to SCOTUS: ‘Drop Dead’

The Christian resister should modify her stance or resign her state job
scotus life

Kim Davis, the elected Kentucky county clerk, is still refusing to grant gays marriage licenses, despite being ordered to by the US Supreme Court. She says she’s acting under “God’s authority,” and has forbidden anyone in her office from issuing marriage licenses.

Ryan T. Anderson says she’s wrong, and that there’s a middle ground in which religious liberty and marriage rights can be accommodated:

Kim Davis, the clerk for Rowan County, has a sincere religious belief that marriage is the union of husband and wife, and says she cannot in good faith issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple. As a result she stopped issuing marriage licenses to all couples (both same-sex and opposite-sex) after the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling in June.

In this way she thought she would avoid the charge of discrimination.

As I explain in my new book, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” there are ways in which public policy can create a win-win situation: where all eligible couples can receive a license and where as many employees as possible can be accommodated.

North Carolina provides a great example. The state legislature earlier this year passed a law that protects magistrates who object to performing solemnizing ceremonies for same-sex marriages and clerks who object to issuing same-sex marriage licenses. It also makes clear that no one can be denied a marriage license, but magistrates or clerks could recuse themselves from the process behind the scenes should they have sincere objections to same-sex marriage.

Again, it’s a win-win for everyone. No one loses anything.

I agree with Anderson, a fellow marriage traditionalist. Whether Kim Davis likes it or not, same-sex marriage is the law of the land. Religious liberty is hugely important, but it’s not a trump card. She should appoint someone in her office who has no sincere religious objection to providing same-sex couples with marriage licenses to handle that task. If she cannot in good conscience do this, she should resign. We religious and social conservatives hate it when the left demands that people like us must “bake the cake,” so to speak, or lose everything. I don’t see the value in Davis’s maximalist position, especially after SCOTUS has ruled. In the future, there will surely be hills worth dying on, so to speak, as Christians. This is not one of them.

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