COMMENTS:
* This is a woman elected to a public office and paid $80,000/year from public funds generated by taxes paid by the public. Her religion should not be allowed to have any influence on her doing her job. She does the job as mandated by the county where she was elected to serve, she gets paid. She puts her religion first and doesn't do the job, she doesn't get paid and loses her job to someone willing to do it. Simple as that. ...
* Religion is a choice not a governing law, you can not impose it to others , you are free to talk about it, with honor and respect to others and this will be your believe but for most of the time not the believe of others , and then let's not confuse freedom with respect and honor to freedom with not respect and honor.
* She does not have the right to refuse to put her signiture on the document. She is a Gov't employee, acting on behalf of the Gov't (State) and that is her job. If she doesn't want to sign, then she can simply resign.
* 1. Because government gives marriage certain rights and privileges, and it also oversees the end of them. (since we don't go to church for a divorce.) 2. Yes, she has the right to not do the job she was hired to do. We all do. And we all can suffer the consequences of not doing the jobs we were hired to do. 3. Why should people have to travel outside of their county to get the services that they are paying their county to provide?
* ... The government licencing of marriage is not about sanctity or religion. It speaks to taxation, and estate. Also to insurance and other LEGAL matters. The SS marriage is a civil union. They may have a religious union also, if their church is willing. No one is attempting to force anyone to accept anything, but she is trying to force THEM to accept her religion.
* Is she the only clerk in that office?
* No she isn't but she would not allow anyone else to issue them either. They were afraid of her and therefor did not issue the licenses because of possible consequences from her.
* What Kim Davis is seeking is not religious freedom, but religious oppression. She is seeking to impose her religious values on others, by impeding those who are constitutionally entitled to get married, and trying to deny them the opportunity to do so. ...
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When Your Religious Liberty Touches the End of My Nose
By Rev. Chris Glaser, September 3, 2015
Do you know that the Kentucky county clerk refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-gender couples has been married four times and allegedly gave birth to twins fathered by another man five months after her first divorce? At best, this is irony, at worst, hypocrisy.
In my book, As My Own Soul: The Blessing of Same-Gender Marriage, I pointed out that a thrice-married Georgia congressman introduced the Defense of Marriage Act and it was signed into law by a philandering president. Irony or hypocrisy?
We live in a representative democracy, not a theocracy. This is neither the Vatican nor an Islamic nation. Nor should we be like Israel, dominated by one religious tradition.
It's bad enough that our representative democracy, controlled largely by English-only-speaking, privileged, nominally-Christian, straight white males historically and presently has institutionalized many religious regulations and traditions in our legal codes and practices, despite our alleged separation of church and state. (Thank God for the colonial Baptists, who persuaded our federal-government-in-formation to include that principle. Many current Baptists apparently disavow that sentiment.)
What's next? Civil servants refusing to issue marriage licenses to atheists? To interfaith couples? To interracial couples--oh wait, they tried to do that already, also on religious grounds!
If there is one religious principle I would legislate, if there was one commandment I would like to see engraved over the entrance of every public building, it would be:
DO UNTO OTHERS WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU.
That might stay the hands of those who work on Wall Street and in corporate offices, as well as legislators and judges and presidents and other public servants.
That might also prompt restraint among religious leaders and communities, as well as their zealots and extremists.
It might change attitudes toward immigrants seeking a better life, toward the rights of women--including their reproductive choices, toward better integration of those with disabilities, toward all minorities' hopes of representation (including D.C. residents!), toward the poor and disadvantaged, toward those who are incarcerated.
It might even change our approach to international relations.
This should become our new "gold standard."
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