Law For Thee, But Not For Me
As McArdle avers, once you step outside the rule of law (meaning the positive law, or man-made law), you have done something radical, something that challenges the constitutional order at its root. There may be good reason to do this, but such an act is so morally serious that it must not be undertaken lightly, or without deliberation. It’s clear that there are many Christians who support Kim Davis because she’s doing something, even if that something is arguably counterproductive. This is unwise.
.. When an official can no longer execute the laws in question due to an assault on conscience, and after all accommodating measures have been exhausted, he or she could work for change as a private citizen, engaging the democratic process in hopes of changing the questionable law.
.. If religious liberty means that even officers of the state can defy the law without consequence, then it makes every individual a potential tyrant. The Kentucky Pentecostal county clerk who refuses the gay couple a marriage permit in principle legitimizes the California Episcopalian county clerk who refuses to record marriages performed by ministers of churches that don’t marry same-sex couples.