Timelordwho wrote:
This person is not performing the government duties she is being paid to perform. She should either choose to perform those duties or cease her employment. She is free to adhere to her religious beliefs but not to fail to the governmental duties entrusted to her.
Her religious beliefs and her employment were not in conflict when she was originally hired. There is an segment (a growing segment btw) of religious people who believe that secularists are intentionally forcing government services to engage in activities in violation of specific religious beliefs with the intent of driving those people out of government service (or even just "public service"). They see recent changes that have pushed the Catholic Church out of the business of adoption as an example of this (can't be a licensed adoption agency if you wont place children with gay couples). Birth control becomes another issue, especially as we move to greater government regulation of health care. If all health care providers are required to provide birth control as a standard part of health insurance, and all people must be covered, then no one who objects to the use of birth control can be employed, not just in the government, but in any job that dispenses medicine (we've had this topic discussed on this forum). This goes double for the issue of abortion care btw, and is why that issue became (and still is) such a big deal.
There are already grumblings that the SCOTUS ruling could be interpreted as requiring anyone licensed to perform marriages to perform gay marriages as well. And while they got a "well, we would never do that to a priest/minister" in response to their concerns, this is yet another case of "rule by exception". The law as written/ruled does not technically allow for exception. If a gay couple can intentionally go out of their way to show up at the desk of a county clerk who has a religious objection to providing a marriage license to a gay couple, why not intentionally go out of their way to demand that a specific priest perform their wedding? Isn't it discrimination if the priest says no? If they sued that priest, would they win? Can you honestly say what the outcome would be?
Balancing the right of a religious person to practice their faith against such issues is not as simple as "they just have to do it or quit". Precisely because it would be terrifically easy to keep adding things to the job requirements that you know they oppose so as to get them all to leave. Which dovetails directly into religious persecution. Being obvious about the fact that this is about intentionally putting religious people into that position absolutely feeds the sense of persecution (and, in fact, becomes de-facto persecution).
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What if a conscientious objector worked at a DMV, and refused drivers licenses to people who had served in the military? They would be fired, and rightly so.
Bad example, since there's no correlation between driving and serving in the military. What if tomorrow the Supreme Court ruled that blind people can't be denied the right to a drivers license, and a DMV worker, who steadfastly believes that blind people shouldn't drive, refuses to hand out licenses to them? Perhaps said worker is perfectly fine with providing alternative forms of official state ID for people who are blind or otherwise incapable of operating a motor vehicle, but the courts ruled for some reason that this was "separate but equal" and therefore in violation of the Constitution. Absurd? Absolutely, but some of us view granting marriage licenses to gay couples in about the same way. I can't speak for this woman's reasons, but my point is that she entered into employment under a specific understanding of the duties involved, and those duties have changed in ways that directly violate her beliefs.
It's not as simple as saying she must comply or quit. I happen to agree that she's not going to win this one, but I also see that her action is going to be seen by a lot of people as yet another warning sign of a movement aimed not so much at fighting for the rights of people, but directly against their own rights. And to be honest, the mocking and attacking of her faith doesn't help but amplify that perception.