Posted on 09/09/2015 9:35:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When the ACLU of Colorado likened a baker who won't supply cakes for gay weddings to a police officer who refuses to protect a church or synagogue, it blurred the distinction between private action and state action, which is vital to a free society. Conservatives who defend Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who last week went to jail rather than issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, are making the same mistake. Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said a federal judge's decision to hold Davis in contempt of court amounted to "the criminalization of a Christian for believing in the traditional definition of marriage." He warned that pastors, photographers, caterers and florists who decline to participate in gay weddings could receive similar treatment.
"We must defend religious liberty and never surrender to judicial tyranny," Huckabee said. "This is a reckless, appalling, out-of-control decision that undermines the Constitution of the United States and our fundamental right to religious liberty."
Other Republican presidential contenders likewise framed Davis' refusal to comply with the Supreme Court decision overturning state bans on gay marriage as an exercise of the religious freedom protected by the First Amendment. "I think it's absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberty," said Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was even more emphatic. "Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny," Cruz said in a statement. "Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America."
As my Reason colleague Scott Shackford noted, Cruz seems to have forgotten about a long line of Christian women who were arrested for living according to their faith as they understood it, including abolitionists, integrationists, alcohol prohibitionists, peace activists and death penalty opponents. More to the point, Davis was not arrested for living according to her faith; she was arrested for trying to impose her faith on others.
The government, unlike private businesses, is constitutionally obligated to treat all citizens equally under the law. Last June, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court said that obligation means states must issue marriage licenses to couples without regard to their sexual orientation.
Many conservatives disagree with that decision. Huckabee even likens it to Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 decision upholding slavery. Because Obergefell, whatever the merits of its legal reasoning, expands liberty rather than contracting it, that comparison strikes me as inapposite, to say the least. Refusing to recognize gay marriage is hardly a moral cause on par with ending slavery.
In any case, as a representative of her state's government, Davis is obligated to comply with the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection guarantee, just as county clerks who objected to marriages between people of different races (even on religious grounds) were obligated to issue licenses for such marriages after the court concluded that bans on miscegenation violated that principle. If Davis cannot in good conscience issue marriage licenses to gay couples, the honorable thing for her to do would be to resign.
People cannot, in the name of religious liberty, insist on keeping a job when they are unwilling to perform the duties it entails. That goes for private as well as government employees. If Davis took a job that required her to photograph gay weddings or bake cakes for them, she would have no right to reject those tasks on religious grounds and expect to keep the job.
The situation would be different if Davis started her own bakery or photography business. In that case, she should be (and in Kentucky would be) free to turn away work related to gay weddings based on her religious objections to such unions.
The ACLU is wrong to argue that such a refusal is essentially the same as unequal treatment by the government. So is Mike Huckabee.
-- Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
So, I guess we are just supposed to flip a coin as to which judge to obey.
Use the inner compass.
The author’s view is creating a religious test for election or appointment to certain offices.
Oh, and, by the way...the view in question is NOT Kim Davis's view, it's the view of the people who make the laws for Kentucky and for the United States.
The question we need to start asking, urgently, is "Do the People of the United States have the right to impose, through legislation, their views on those who disagree"?
It’s a disingenuous statement for a homo-fascist to say that in the “private” sphere you can do what you want in ways that you can’t in public service, when they are trying to passed EXACTLY these laws nationwide to take away from private businesses their rights to follow the dictates of their religion and conscience.
Therefore, I don’t believe them.
RE: The question we need to start asking, urgently, is “Do the People of the United States have the right to impose, through legislation, their views on those who disagree”?
The question in the title shows a mis-understanding of the idea of “imposing one’s view”. It also shows an unstated premise — that only certain persons have the “right” to “impose” his or her view and others therefore, have to meekly submit to that imposition.
Every single law that is passed, every single decision made by a judge, is in a sense “imposing one’s view” of something.
In this particular case, it is one’s view of marriage.
So, the question can be turned around — Does Justice Kennedy have the right to IMPOSE HIS VIEW of marriage on 310 million Americans, most of whom are Christians? A huge number of whom are DEVOUT Christians who believe that marriage is ordained by God to be one man and one woman?
So, who has the right to IMPOSE whose views?
If Kim Davis doesn’t ( as the author implies ), why do we give power to Kennedy to impose HIS VIEW of marriage on others?
The above question of course is not answered by the author, he simply assumes that Kennedy has the right.
You and I of course REJECT that premise.
I just read that two gays flew in from San Francisco just to get married in that office. What a pack of vindictive, spiteful little creeps they are.
Funny, liberals managed to get the US Supreme Court to impose their view on marriage on the country.
But the rest of us have no right to object to it?
It turns out Jacob Sallum and other libertarians are as unprincipled and hypocritical about freedom as liberals are.
End of story.
Yeah, sounds like he did absolutely no research. Worthless article.
Incredible point. Barf on Townhall.
I’m just starting to realize they are Satanic, along with vindictive, spiteful and creepy.
Is only muslims, the little darlings of the left, and not for Christians?
Do I understand this right?
How about the fact that Kim Davis was elected prior> to gay marriage being stuffed down the country's collective throat (no pun intended there!) by the five extreme, left-wing progressive liberals on the US Supreme Court?
How about the fact that Kim Davis made repeated attempts to have the State Legislature adopt changes to the law so that the County Clerk's specific names weren't on the marriage license?
Or how about all the other things Kim Davis did to raise awareness as to why she had reservations about her name being on marriage licenses issued to homosexuals?
Even better: How about the fact that Kim Davis and her staff issued ZERO marriage licenses to ANYONE? That's not even discrimination.
This woman gets demonized by the progressive liberal left in the media (and here on FR....you all know who you are) because FACTS DON'T MATTER to them.
Disgusting.
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