Kim Davis, the county clerk for Rowan Count, Kentucky, got the media and the Left in a frenzy when she asked, like others in similar situations, for an accommodation for her religious beliefs. In other circumstances, she may have received it, but there are just some political issues on the Left that trump First Amendment rights.

Is what she did within the bounds of religious freedom, or is she grandstanding? Do oaths of office mean something, or does something supersede them? And what of other government officials who have decided which laws they will comply with? Why aren't they in jail? These and other questions are addresses in this episode

Mentioned links:

When Does Your Religion Legally Excuse You From Doing Part of Your Job? (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/09/04/when-does-your-religion-legally-excuse-you-from-doing-part-of-your-job/)

Stand Up for Religious Beliefs and Get Thrown in Jail... But What Law Was Broken? (http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/2015/09/08/stand-up-for-religious-beliefs-and-get-thrown-in-jail-but-what-law-was-broken/)

County Clerk Jailed for Contempt, Hypocrisy Abounds (http://patriotpost.us/posts/37406)

Judge Orders Defiant Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis Be Released From Jail, Mandates What She ‘Shall Not’ Do (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/09/08/judge-orders-defiant-kentucky-clerks-release-from-jail/)

Show transcript

Kim Davis is the county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky. It’s an elected, government position, not one where she was appointed or hired. That’ll be important to know later on. Davis is the person who refused to issue marriage licenses with her name on them after the Supreme Court overrode state laws to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.  In Kentucky, that meant they nullified the votes of 75% of Kentuckians. “One man, one vote” indeed.

Davis is a Christian, and she felt that her religious beliefs compelled her to not issue marriage licenses with her name or title on them to same-sex couples. She felt that this would be a tacit endorsement of something she considered against her religion. Student-led prayers at football games or graduation ceremonies have been considered endorsements of religion in many places, even though the student isn’t speaking for the school or the government. If those prayers are supposedly an endorsement of religion by the state, certainly one’s name or position on the marriage license could be seen as an endorsement as well, by the person whose name is, in fact, representing the government.

Further, instead of discriminating against specific couples, she stopped issuing them to anyone until her religious objection could be accommodated. Some accused her of discriminating against same-sex couples, but that’s a rather tough point to make when opposite-sex couples can’t get one either. It doesn’t stop them from making the accusation, of course, but it shows how desperate some folks are to play the victim.

What she wanted was an accommodation for her religious beliefs. You know, just like nurses who had objections to being involved in abortions, or pacifist postal workers who had religious objections to processing draft registration forms, or a Jehovah’s Witness employee who had religious objections to raising a flag, which was a task assigned to him, or a philosophically vegetarian bus driver who refused to hand out hamburger coupons as part of an agency’s promotion aimed at boosting ridership. In those cases and many others, people were given an accommodation for their beliefs, religious or otherwise. There is a great, if lengthy, article linked to in the show notes by First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh that gets into the ins and outs of what the requirements are for creating such accommodations, and what it’s limits might be. His ultimate conclusion is that Davis’ requests are probably not burdensome to her employer, in this case the state of Kentucky,