Posted on 09/02/2015 2:56:20 AM PDT by markomalley
Can a Christian be a county clerk in the United States?
This is a question it now appears may ultimately be decided by five Supreme Court justices. With it, too, will ride such questions as: Can a Christian be a doctor? A nurse? A public-school teacher?
In June, when five justices declared that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment creates a right to "same-sex marriage," Justice Clarence Thomas issued a warning.
"In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution, it is a religious institution as well," Thomas wrote in his dissent. "Today's decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter. It appears all but inevitable that the two will come into conflict, particularly as individuals and churches are confronted with demands to participate in and endorse civil marriages between same-sex couples.
"The majority," said Thomas, "appears unmoved by that inevitability."
No sooner had the five justices commanded nationwide recognition of same-sex "marriage," then a move began in Kentucky to test whether an individual county clerk could be forced to personally authorize a same-sex marriage in contradiction to her Christian faith.
The rapid sequence of events was summarized in an appeal this clerk's nonprofit law firm — the Liberty Counsel — presented to the Supreme Court asking for an injunction to prevent her from being forced to do so.
First, Democratic Kentucky Gov. Steven Beshear ordered that all county clerks in the state would issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on a new "gender-neutral" form provided by the state government.
Like the previous form that recognized marriage as the union of a man and woman, this new form required county clerks to personally authorize each marriage in their own name — whether the two people getting "married" were a man and a woman or a same-sex couple.
This presented Kim Davis, a devout Christian, with a moral problem. She had served as deputy clerk of Rowan County for 26 years before being elected clerk last November.
She had never refused to perform any function of her office. But this was different.
"I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage," she said in a statement issued Tuesday.
"To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God's definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience," she said. "It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision. For me it is a decision of obedience. I have no animosity toward anyone and harbor no ill will. To me this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God's Word. It is a matter of religious liberty, which is protected under the First Amendment, the Kentucky Constitution, and in the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act."
"Our history is filled with accommodations for people's religious freedom and conscience," said Davis. "I want to continue to perform my duties, but I also am requesting what our Founders envisioned - that conscience and religious freedom would be protected. That is all I am asking."
Davis stopped issuing marriage licenses, whether to opposite-sex or same-sex couples, and sought an accommodation from the state that would allow people to get marriage licenses without forcing a particular county clerk to personally authorize the marriage
In the meantime, nothing prevented same-sex couples living in Rowan County from entering "marriages" as ordered by the five Supreme Court justices.
"Under Kentucky marriage law predating Obergefell, individuals may obtain a marriage license from the county clerk in any of Kentucky's 120 counties, irrespective of their county of residence," Davis's Liberty Counsel attorneys told the Supreme Court in her request for an injunction.
"More than ten other clerks' offices are within a one hour drive of the Rowan County office, and these counties are issuing marriage licenses, along with the two counties where preliminary injunction hearings were held in this matter," said the lawyers.
But that did not stop four couples — two of opposite sexes and two of the same — from suing Davis, demanding she execute their marriage licenses.
The governor, meanwhile, offered Davis no mercy.
"Gov. Beshear has flatly rejected Davis' request for religious exemption," her lawyers explain. "In his view, Davis must either comply with his SSM Mandate, or resign from office."
This courageous woman has stood her ground.
The crusade against Davis aims to establish that if you are a Christian, who believes in Christ's teachings on marriage and will not act against them, you are no longer qualified to serve as a county clerk in the United States.
MARRIAGE. As a natural institution, the lasting union of a man and a woman who agree to give and receive rights over each other for the performance of the act of generation and for the fostering of their mutual love.
Since a sodomite relationship can not, by its very definition, be "generative", the term "same sex marriage" is a total non-sequitur.
Hence my screen-name.
It is the destruction of the Language which is the Marxist technique to actually destroy civil society and Truth/God (Objective Truth).
The Moral Relativism that John Dewey brought to brainwash children-—(Hitler-—control the textbooks and you control the minds) has totally removed the Christian Worldview from the masses although the Christian Worldview is the only compatible worldview for our Constitution. Our Individual Natural Rights from God is a Christian concept. Natural Rights can never consist of sodomizing others-—or using humans in an evil, dehumanizing way-—like killing them (abortion).
They threw out the Constitution embedded with Natural Law Theory for Stalin’s Rule of Man. (It is unconstitutional). In our jurisprudence according to Justice John Marshall (the Father of Jurisprudence)——when law ceases to be Just, it ceases to be Law. It is “null and void” and we have a duty to disobey unjust law. (MLK,Jr. Nuremberg Trials). Justice is the Queen of Virtue and anything that promotes the vice of sodomy or the corruptions of the English Language and truth-—can not be a “Just” Law.
Why wouldn’t they just hire someone else to come in one day a week to make licenses available to homosexuals pretending they want to get married? It’s an easy fix.
If the Feds want faggots married....let the Feds issue a federal marriage license. Better yet let Roberts marry them in his chambers. He seems to be a gay kinda guy.
You can be a Christian without being a county clerk.
That certainly seems to be working.
As for the Cty. Clerk refusing, I applaud her for standing for her beliefs. I see the marriage license issue as another strike against Christianity. If this were a Muslim issue, the SCOTUS would be stumbling all over themselves to allow the county clerk her right to refuse.
The answer is “of course”.
Same sex marriage is nothing The Church does. It is not a sacrament any more than the “marriages” performed by judges, county clerks, notaries, lawyers or the Rev. Billy Bob Jeff and his snake! If a Christian can countenance those “marriages”, which are a mockery of the Mysterium of Holy Matrimony, he or she should be able to issue a license for Adam and Steve to do the same thing!
Because apparently her signature has to be on it.
Looks like we are having a “Rosa Parks” moment.
The LGBT Gay Gestapo wish to DESTROY this Christian Woman.
On another thread, apparently the local judge has offered to issue licenses, but the gay plaintiffs are not satisfied. They want HER to personally bake their damn cake.
It sure was a sobering moment when I realized that Ayatollah Khomenei was right when he called the United States of America "the Great Satan."
The answer is “it depends.”
Yesterday, there was a post about a suit from a Muslim air stewardess who objected to serving alcohol on the plane, although it is a clear duty of the job. The question was, “would arrangements be made that would enable her to perform her job without that doing that part of it?”
If the answer is yes for the Muslim stewardess, it should be yes for the Christian Clerk or Justice of the Peace or cake baker.
You can be a Christian and a County Clerk but you do not get to decide the law. If she doesn’t feel like she can do the job in good conscience she should resign.
Because the point was never the license . . . or even the “marriage” . . . the point was to stamp out Christian faith wherever anyone still seems to take it seriously.
It’s an easy fix.
You’ve missed the point...the homoists have no inclination towards actually receiving the document in a timely manner...they are more interested in the proximate value of making a negative, and damaging, statement against this particular clerk...
America as intended ceases to be.Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.
The Constitution was written for, and to be ratified by, Christians.
Under Printz v US, the USSC ruled that states and their elected officers cannot be drafted to carry out federal dictates. If the federal government wants gays married, the federal government must provide the bureaucrats to carry out the federal edicts.
I expect the fascist federal courts to ignore that ruling. We are now a society without laws. States need to invite federal actors to leave their territories.
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