Agreed. I applaud her moral courage but if the rule of law can be overthrown by one person saying their religious beliefs trump court orders then what the hell are we gonna do when someone cites the Quran in defiance of the law?
She fought the good fight, but it’s over. The time has come to just find a subordinate who doesn’t mind issuing the licenses or consider resigning. It’s a sad day when Christians are likely to be barred by their religious faith from holding public office in this country.
She is adhering to the long standing and well understood meaning of the law when she follows her religious convictions. The people in the wrong are the ones who have attempted to force a change to the law without going through the proper legal process, i.e. the legislative process.
Any deviations from the centuries held understanding of the law should not be respected if it does not occur as a result of the legislative process.
Judges were never intended to have the power to force changes in law, their duty is to interpret the law in accordance with the intent of the legislators, not to make it up themselves.
If the court suddenly ruled that black people must be excluded from voting, it would be no more the duty of the clerk to enforce that immoral law than it would be to enforce this immoral law.
What we need to do is tell people that the court has violated it's authority, and that we will deliberately disobey them when they are wrong, in any manner we can.
We need more governors to defy the courts. We need to push the idea that the courts deserve to be defied, and that we have a right to defy them.
We need to make the idea of defying out of control courts socially acceptable.