What sort of specific exemptions could the states have carved out for a public official who refused to perform the duties of her office?
My thought is that, while it breaks down at higher offices, so long as the duties the public official cannot perform due to their beliefs are both trivial and can be trivially covered by other workers/officials at the same location, then you can give them an exception. My comparison would be a worker in a grocery store that, due to law, can't sell alcohol/tobacco due to their age or religious objection, but are still considered worthy employees by the company, they just don't put said worker in the related section/department, and have a sign up that if you're purchasing these objects to use a specific lane.
On the other hand, if you get too many workers who can't/won't work those sections, eventually it would become no longer a trivially accommodated exemption, at which point if you object during hiring interviews, or convert and start objecting, you make be told "sorry, no, we already have too many objectors to accomodate you, if you insist you won't be hired or will be let go, in favor of hiring somebody that will do it."
Initially, Davis refused to issue -- or allow to be issued by her office -- a marriage license for a same-sex couple. The objection was made that this was discriminatory. Her response was to stop issuing marriage licenses to anyone. Which meant that the entire county was being held hostage to her religious beliefs.
If you do a bit of research on Ms. Davis, you'll find that she is the living embodiment of hypocrisy.
Indeed on the hypocrisy. 4-5 marriages, and infidelity during them. That, I'd say, is more damaging to the concept of marriage than letting gay people marry each other.
And if you'd do a bit of research, you'll find her "hypocrisy" is that she lived a life of a sinner, with many divorces, before her conversion to Christianity.
I have never read about there being a conversion. Or even becoming "born again", where a lapsed christian finds faith.
That would be a pretty easy accomodation. Additionally, they could also allow wedding vendors to refuse service based on religious convictions so we could avoid issues like this:
I agree with this. I'm going to note that we have a pretty big change here though. My thoughts on the proper rules and operation of government in regards to religion is very different than my rules and operations for private businesses and religion.
Basically, if you're government, like I said earlier, you're more or less required to be agnostic about religion. You're not allowed to discriminate by or for religion. You're not allowed to favor or disfavor religious stuff. As a government employee, you're required to meet these requirements.
If you're a private company, on the other hand, I think that you should be allowed to be religious and have policies in accordance with said religion.
So a baker can refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding over religious concerns. Hell, they could refuse to bake a cake for a couple with a divorcee in it because their religion doesn't recognize divorce, and therefore the marriage would be bigamy. A government office is NOT allowed to deny issuing a marriage license to a gay couple if they meet all the requirements under law for obtaining said license, or said couple with divorces who are marrying.
That's before getting into that I think that the baker company, let's say that it's a chain grocery store, should be able to fire an employee for violating policy and refusing to serve a customer under the rules of the company. The government should be able to fire employees for not performing the work per the terms of their employment for pretty much the same reason.
Requiring the work to always stay the same over a career, setting terms at hiring, isn't practical either, but I will have changing work demands introducing work unacceptable to the employee would move it from a "firing" offense for not doing the required job to a "laid off" surplussing if it is the change that the employee can't/won't accomodate. A non-religious example would be that you can't hire somebody to be a cashier, then tell them that they're going to be a garbage collector, and fire them for refusing to be a garbage collector instead. You can lay them off, with all the consequences of that, such as unemployment benefits.
She chose to stand her ground and not slink away from the field of battle using legalisms as an excuse to retreat.
She is to be commended for standing up to the banal judicia/bureaucratic evil.
I don't see letting gay people get marriage contracts to be banal or evil. At least no more than letting people who have already been divorced remarry, letting people who just met get married, under-18 get married, without counseling to ensure that they know what they're getting into, etc...
