How far can we take the "but it goes against my religion!!!111" argument?

Alright, so we see right wing Christians defending Davis because she went to jail. Apparently an agent of the state should be allowed to impose their religious will on the people even though the SCOUTS disagrees. So my question to the Christians, how far can this go?

Should...:
A Muslim be allowed to deny a drivers license to a woman on religious grounds?
An Amish person be allowed to deny a drivers license period on religious grounds?
A Muslim be allowed to deny a marriage license to a Christian couple on on religious grounds?
A Muslim be allowed to issue a marriage licence to a couple where the groom is 50 years old and the bride twelve years old on religious grounds?

Let's see how far down the rabbit hole of religious insanity we wish to travel.

 

As a right wing Christian, I both agree and disagree with Davis. First, I agree that same sex marriage shouldn't be allowed. That said, my opinion doesn't matter, as the SCOTUS has ruled otherwise. In her shoes, I would have first, referred the SS couple to a deputy clerk who didn't mind doing it. If that wasn't legally acceptable, I would have resigned. I feel the same with the Muslims above.

 

How about a gay clerk refusing to issue licenses for straight couples? This Kentucky scenario is a perfect example of the statist hypocrisy of the right. They claim to be the party of "limited government' but yet fought with everything they had to maintain the status quo and are now making this slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging mouth breather into a martyr for their "movement" with idiotic statements like this:

“Today, for the first time in history, an American citizen has been incarcerated for having the belief of conscience that marriage is the union of one man and one woman,” Mr. Gannam [Davis' attorney] said after a hearing that stretched deep into Thursday afternoon. “And she’s been ordered to stay there until she’s willing to change her mind, until she’s willing to change her conscience about what belief is.”
​

What a bunch of ludicrous hogwash! And from a presumably "educated" person? FFS anybody who believes this tripe is a complete moron. An American citizen has not been incarcerated for her religious beliefs. She has been incarcerated for failing to execute her sworn oath of office which placed her in contempt of the USSC. And she has not been ordered to "change her mind," She has been ordered to do her (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) job -- which is what she swore to when she took that oath.

 

As far as I know, most Christians do not support her refusal to either comply with the law or resign her position.

 

You've made your hatred of religious people - or about 90% of all people alive and in the past - well known.

You answer your own question:

A 60 year old Muslim brings in a 15 year old girl bride covered head to toe in a black cloak- whose Muslim fhat has signed off on getting a marriage license - and the 60 year old says the 15 year old girl must marry him as the will of Allah. However, the girl's American mother declares she totally opposes this and that the 15 year is being forced to do this under threat of going to hell and social retaliation.

Under your view, if you refuse to issue the marriage license you should immediately be put into prison OR immediately resign.

You are arguing that people must - always - be totally submissive to any administrative policies, abandon being within government, or summarily go to prison. That is convenient - if a person is 100% amoral. No protesting and no conscious is allowed to anyone in government.

So, for example, all mayors and police chiefs of sanctuary cities should all be immediately and indefinitely imprisoned until they resign or cease violating federal law.

 

McDonalds and WalMart should be able to have any employee who doesn't "do their job" imprisoned too. Refusing to do your job - private or public sector - has never been an imprisonment offense - until this wacko ego maniac power-tripped judge came along.

 

So you are using my example of an adult marrying a child as an argument of your own? How does that work? lol

If the fifteen year old cannot marry unless she is emancipated. Sooooooo, I fail to see how marrying a minor somehow dismisses my argument.

 

All the way till the war starts. Seems the plan anyway.
Edit and refrain, no this is NOT a threat. Just an opinion. As I will be way dead and gone before the first shot is fired in anger in this nation again.

 

Is that why they're defending her?
You should rethink the premise of your thread.

Most people don't agree with that, especially Christians.


Doesn't have anything to do with what the scouts think though.

Zzz...
All of those have been asked in the multitude of Kim Davis threads that have flooded this place the last week.

The answer is still "She should have done her job, or let someone else do it".


And what is !!!111 ?

 

While I am not particularly religious or opposed to gay marriage, I think there is one aspect that renders all of your above arguments moot. Davis took a job when she was not forced to violate her religious principles to fulfill the duties of that job, and those duties subsequently changed. She held a job that later asked her to violate her religious principles, by virtue of that change. In your examples, that would theoretically be a person that took a job that already would require her to violate her religious principles, but she took it anyway, with the intention of never fulfilling the duties of that job.

 

Of course they don't.... but that reality doesn't make for a good Kim Davis bash-thread.

 

I disagree with you, but I appreciate your position. Frankly, we never should have allowed government to insert itself into marriage in the first place -- it is a cultural, social, and sometimes spiritual/religious institution in which a government in a nation of free men has no business interfering. That said, as we are all equal under the law according to the 14th Amendment, and the 10th Amendment affirms that no state shall make a law that is unconstitutional, the USSC ruled correctly in this instance -- yes, even overriding state legislatures, Congress, and even the much vaunted (and highly-overrated) "will of the people."

The problem I have with referring the matter to a "deputy clerk who didn't mind doing it" as you suggest is something I'll call legal parity: Each citizen of that county is entitled to the full legal "franchise" and all rights, grants, and authorities thereto. Allowing this duly elected and sworn official to willfully evade her constitutional obligation because it makes her uncomfortable is strictly forbidden on mere ethical and philosophical grounds alone. Not to mention the very practical realities and dangerous precedent accordant to such a concession.

 

On what grounds? An employee of Wal Mart is not using the violence of the state to force people as a veil to cover their unwillingness to do their job.

 

No, in most states one parent can sign off on a minor being married. Soooo all you did was duck the question.

In the Dread Scott decision, a black slave was ordered returned to the slave owner - subject then to torture and murder. I gather you as a Federal Marshall would "yield to the higher authority" of the Supreme Court and follow an order to do so. You will do anything government tells you to do.

 

I'm afraid you've got it backwards. The law prohibits the marriage of a 15-year-old. The clerk in question would not be breaking the law by denying the application, but rather enforcing it -- which is what this idiot in Kentucky refused to do: execute her sworn obligations as an elected official. Only if the law permitted the child marriage and the clerk refused would you have a point.

This is a straw man balancing precariously on a mountain of intentional factual omissions and misdirections. Let me restate for you: "Elected officials who have take a sworn oath of office must always, 100% of the time, enforce the law as written -- as it is their sole duty as elected officials, regardless of their personal beliefs, feelings, or convictions" She is allowed to protest all she wants - but that's not what she did, is it? She took the law into her own hands. She had no right to do that. She took a solemn oath not to do that. So she goes to jail. That's how it works.

That would be amazing. But please be consistent in your positions: You want this lady to go free because you agree with her. You want the sanctuary city guys to be jailed because you disagree with them.

 

FFS. Get back to me when you learn what a sworn oath is. And tell me if McDonalds and Walmart employees take them.

 

Making allowances for a conscientious objector has been standard policy and the law for centuries.

In the medical field, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists can refuse to provide authorized legal services based on their conscientious objection to the procedure - such as refusing to perform or participate in an abortion, withdrawing life support, or to perform physician assisted suicide.

People can exempt themselves from mandatory military service over moral/religious grounds.

On the news this morning, a mailman was mentioned who refused to deliver selective service mail on his anti-war belief, another refused to deliver abortion related material on his anti-abortion belief. They were accommodated.

The nation has always made allowances for people's moral beliefs. Davis should be treated the same.

If a Muslim does not want to issue a drivers license to a woman, then accommodate the Muslim. The woman is not denied the license unless all people issuing the license are Muslim and refuse. The woman might be inconvenienced but that's the price to be paid for a tolerant society.


And you mischaracterize the situation with Davis. Before being given the ultimatum of issuing in her name the gay marriage licenses, she suggested that someone else sign the form, or the form be modified, or another clerk in another county sign the form. She said the licenses would be issued if she did not have to put her name on them. There were options, the gay couples could have easily gotten their licenses but deliberately made this an issue.

Rather than accommodate Davis conscientious objector status, the federal government threw her in jail.

 

First of all, She didn't "take a job." She ran for -- and won -- elected office. Second, she took an oath to uphold the laws and defend Constitution of the United States, as every elected official must do. If at some future time -- as now -- she is unable to faithfully execute said oath, it is her obligation to resign. She is a public servant -- if her conscience prevents her from serving the public, that's on her and it is the risk every elected official must take. She did not have to go to jail here. And in fact, I think she would have made an even more meaningful statement had she resigned. Not to mention, kept her integrity.

- - - Updated - - -

I guess you don't watch Fox News.

 

State officials are required to follow the law. If they choose not to, then they can leave the position and allow someone else to do so.

As for the marriage thing, I had no idea a parent could sign off. Citation needed.

 

She took an oath to do the job, so according to you nothing can change about the job unless she dictates the approval of said changes. FAIL AGAIN! The court gave her 4 chances to comply, and she refused. She is in jail for her failure to comply with a court order. She had other options as well, one of which is she could have resigned due to a conflict of interests, instead she thinks she is God and that part of her duty is to impose her religion on others, who do not share her views. That is why this country was established, to get away from the fascism she seems to think she has a right to perpetuate. Supremacists like her is why this country allows the freedom for individuals to choose their own religion, not have government or their elected officials force religion on them.

 

Private companies would simply fire them, I know I would it is a failure on their part to perform the duties they were hired to perform. Actually in the public sector such as government and the military it has been a threat since the founding of the Nation, if a soldier refuses to do their duty they can and are imprisoned and if they do it combat they can be summarily executed on the spot. The Clerk has her own freedom in her own hands, all she has to do is comply with the court ruling by either issuing the licenses or allowing her underlings do it, until then she is in Contempt and will remain exactly where she is. The is one other outcome and that is she is removed from office and at that point she would probably be released, even though the judge can keep her there for up to a year just because they feel like it, actions have consequences.

 

I am not taking a stand as to whether she is right or wrong in her actions. In truth, I really don't care one way or the other. I did however, correctly point out a glaring and undeniable difference between the Davis situation and the examples put forth in the OP, that renders the comparison useless.

 

Over simplification to the extreme.

She was elected to a public office, and swore an oath to uphold the duties of said office, which included recording marriage licenses. The Supreme Court clarified how marriage should be treated, and stated that to deny people the right to marriage robs them of constitutional protections. This meant that Davis must simply record that 2 men or 2 women applied for a marriage license in Kentucky.

Instead of following the law as her oath demands, she decided to apply her religious doctrine on everyone, which is also unconstitutional since the Constitution clearly says that the Government shall not establish a religion. So are we to allow one errant clerk to defy both a Supreme Court Ruling and the constitutional prohibition against state established religions?

If she were simply a hired official I am sure that the powers that be in the county would have fired her by now, but since she is elected and it takes the Kentucky Legislature to impeach her there's little choice for the judge in this case. He either takes the steps he has, or the courts are shown to be powerless in the face of direct defiance.

 

Straw man: None of these examples are duly elected sworn official -- like Kim Davis who took an oath to uphold the law and to protect and defend the Constitution. And I'd like to suggest the Muslim issue driver licenses to women or find another line of work. My "tolerance" of your beliefs ends at your ability to impose it on me through the organs of government. If she could no longer execute the obligations of her office in good conscience, she should have simply resigned -- I think that would have made an even better statement, and allowed her to keep her integrity.

Again, an elected official who has sworn an oath of office can not be a "conscientious objector." You swore to uphold the law -- ALL OF THE LAW -- not just the parts you like.

 

The religious are going to force us to remove them from political influence. They are incapable of mature, civil, moral, or logical thought. They are in America's way from going forward. Personally, I question anyone who says the only reason they think something is wrong or right is because God says so.