Editorial: Kentucky county clerk should obey the law or resign

“To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision. For me it is a decision of obedience.”

— Excerpt from a statement by Rowan County, Ky., Clerk Kim Davis.

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis was presented with a difficult choice when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that same-sex couples have a right to marry under the U.S. Constitution. Should she be obedient to her religion or to the Constitution she is sworn to uphold?

Davis made the wrong choice.

She announced after giving the matter prayerful consideration that she would cease issuing all marriage licenses in the county, regardless of the applicants’ sexual orientation, to avoid having her name on a license for a same-sex couple. That means, of course, that she is denying the rights of all couples in the county who wish to marry.

It is no answer that they can simply go to one of 130 other Kentucky jurisdictions to obtain a license. If one clerk can deny marriage licenses based on her religious beliefs, all Kentucky officials could do so as well. In fact, following the Supreme Court’s June decision, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear ordered all county clerks to issue marriage licenses without respect to sexual orientation. If they can’t do so, the governor said, they should resign.

That is the choice all government officials must make, whether it is a Christian city administrator who opposes renting public facilities to Jews or a judge who opposes the death penalty on religious grounds. No less a legal authority than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made precisely that point in a 2002 article in which he said, “In my view the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases.”

The First Amendment does not require that public officials abandon their religious beliefs to enter government service. But that doesn't mean they can deny constitutionally protected rights that belong to others based on those religious beliefs.

Kim Davis, a devout Apostolic Christian, cites Scripture and “Jesus Himself” on the definition of marriage, which is her right as a free-thinking individual. But as an elected county official, in regard to the question of separation of church and state, she should have turned to the Gospels that quote Jesus as saying, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

The Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision in Obergefell v. Hodges has triggered fresh legal challenges regarding the First Amendment rights of private businesses to refuse to serve gay couples. Those cases present hard questions. But as it pertains to actions of government officials, there should be no room for debate. Obergefell is now the law of the land, and public officials must choose whether they will uphold that law or find another line of work.