If you can show me a county in which this was not the law before the Clerk volunteered to work in this county, then you will have a valid point.
If you know of no such county where such a change has occurred, then you do not have a point.
Changing the accepted understanding, and the conditions consented to by the employee requires at the very least a re-negotiation of the implicit contract.
Once again, I will quote Abraham Lincoln when he was questioning a witness.
"Suppose you call a tail a leg. How many legs would a sheep have"? The Man replied "Five." Lincoln said "No, only four. Just because you call a tail a leg, doesn't make it so."
This isn’t the first time the state’s definition of marriage has changed, merely the most recent and most ridiculously impossible so far. I guess my point was that the state’s fairly recent acceptance of no-fault divorce would seem to violate a great many Christian’s beliefs, and I wondered if any clerks refused to issue civil marriage licenses after that change.
“Changing the accepted understanding, and the conditions consented to by the employee requires at the very least a re-negotiation of the implicit contract.”
That’s a good point, and of course I would never fire anyone over non-acceptance of ‘gay marriage.’ But as before, the state’s version of marriage can only ever be whatever judges, pols, or the voting majority decide it is at any one time. To the state in the modern era marriage has obviously always been mutable.
Freegards
And just because a same sex couple have a piece of paper and a ceremony and call themselves married doesn't make it so.
I'm a Catholic. So far as I am concerned Jesus Christ defined marriage when He said, "But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." So marriage is a lifetime union between a man and a woman. Anything else is not a marriage regardless of what others may call it. So two men or two women can get themselves a marriage license, go through the ritual of their choice, and call themselves married, but they aren't married. Not in the Biblical sense, not in the moral sense, and not in the eyes of God, which are the only ones that matter. Likewise a man can divorce his wife and then get a new partner with a new license and go through a new ceremony and call himself married as well. But again, he is not. Not in the Biblical sense, not in the moral sense, and not according to the teachings of Jesus Christ. He is committing adultery.
So that's why I'm puzzled by this woman's position. I don't doubt the sincerity of her beliefs but I think she is looking at it wrong. She says that by issuing a marriage license she is condoning gay marriage and that's violates her religion. But she isn't condoning gay marriage because there is no such thing. If she issues a marriage license to a couple where one or both had been divorced is she condoning adultery? Of course not. Oh the gay couple or the divorced couple can call themselves married, but as Lincoln pointed out calling one thing something that it is not does not make it so. So by issuing the marriage license she is not condoning gay marriage or tacitly approving it because how can you support or approve of something that does not exist? She is, at worst, allowing the same sex couple to continue to fool themselves. And while that may not be the kindest thing to do, there's no sin in that.