II'm 99% that is not correct. I know it was not a few years ago. In a privately owned residence or business, technically anything on that property is your responsibility. If someone brings a bag in, (assuming there is a sign declaring it), they are told that their bag needs to be searched before entering, the person with the bag has the option to leave or abide by the rules and stay under the conditions presented. By accepting to stay, the person with the bag is also therefore accepting that it may/will be searched. The sign says all for two reasons. 1.) because all bags will be searched such as in a lot of government or military buildings, or to avoid claims of discrimination. So, if you come in my home, and see a sign on the front door indicating you need to have your bag searched before entering, by entering and/or staying, you are agreeing to have your bag searched. What I can not do, without cause, is seize or take your bag without your consent. Now, if I find a knife/gun/bomb/drugs/etc. . . in your bag, something I would get in trouble for being that it was on my property, home or business, that's a different story. The only real argument or recourse the bag owner might have, and that's a huge longshot, would be if there was some legal reason they had to be there, could not leave, and had no other alternative. Not likely, and wouldn't excuse anything illegal or dangerous in their bag anyway.
The issue, though, is that, as you pointed out, you can't seize or take my bag without my consent. To do so is possibly theft, possibly assault, and certainly illegal. You're wrong that the sign establishes consent.... and consent can be withdrawn at any point.
Now, the management is within their rights at any point to ask me either to consent to a search or to leave. It's private property and I have no right to be there. So they can essentially prevent me from entering their property by asking to search as I come in. But when I'm on my way out of the store anyway, they have no legal authority to prevent me from leaving, without risking a suit for false imprisonment.
ETA: This link technically covers Australian law, but the rules are similar in the US. (Hence the spelling of "licence.")
Here's the relevant bit:
A shopper can refuse to allow a bag check.
In that situation a shopkeeper may ask the shopper to leave the store and not return unless prepared to comply with the store's conditions for entry. In so doing, the shopkeeper is terminating the licence agreement.
A shopkeeper needs to be absolutely certain that an offence has been committed by the shopper in order to forcibly detain or search the shopper. A shopper who has been forcibly detained by a shopkeeper may sue for false imprisonment if no shop stealing has occurred.
[...]
Under no circumstances must an employee attempt to forcibly restrain the customer or interfere with the bag(s).If any dispute arises the employee should immediately summon the store manager.
The manager will explain the conditions under which the customer entered the store. If the customer again refuses to offer the bags for checking, the manager may ask the customer to leave the store and not return or summon a police officer.
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I don't know. I've seen an awful lot who claim to be "libertarian" defending this kind of thing on the grounds of "local control" and "federal overreach".The funny thing is other parts of the Republican party are turned off by this stuff. I'm pretty sure that eventually the libertarian wing and the religious wing of the party are going to go to turn on each other.One of the dumbest things happening with this today is that Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz are in Kentucky to talk to herOf course they are. For a certain section of the Republican base, this is gold. Confirmation of their persecution complex.
What most modern libertarians don't seem to realize is that many of the earlier and more prominent members of the libertarian movement also shied away from or outright opposed religion, for the same reasons they oppose government. American libertarianism is working against its on "best interests."
As with so many other modern party and movement lines, modern libertarianism is one thing masquerading as another. The modern libertarian movement is actually a theocratic oligarchy movement claiming it wants government out of our personal business but seems to actually want to privatize government, also not libertarianism, with strong Puritan religious tendencies and a drive for war.
Extremist right-wing militia sends armed lunatics to "protect" Kim Davis from US marshals. Right, this will end well.....
Extremist right-wing militia sends armed lunatics to "protect" Kim Davis from US marshals. Right, this will end well.....
I would love to see all of them get arrested for threatening a US Martial, assuming they try to make good on this at all.
Extremist right-wing militia sends armed lunatics to "protect" Kim Davis from US marshals. Right, this will end well.....I would love to see all of them get arrested for threatening a US Martial, assuming they try to make good on this at all.
I would also love to see all of them get arrested for "threatening" a US marshal. That will be a sign that relative sanity has prevailed.
I fear they will get arrested for (attempted?) murder of a US marshal, instead.
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Where's U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens when you need him?
(Cocks hat) "You boys have 24 hours to leave town."
Extremist right-wing militia sends armed lunatics to "protect" Kim Davis from US marshals. Right, this will end well.....
To be fair, Stewart Rhodes does have a fair point in regards to this. Whether or nor anyone agrees with Davis's actions, and I personally do not like the way she handled the situation, I would like to think that the way this was handled seemed a bit heavy-handed to most people.
To clarify what the Oathkeeper's are, for those who do not know, they are former or current military members who oppose government practices that are not Constitutional. As much as people like to vilify them and accuse them of various things, they are not monsters and, for the most part, are not bigots.
I, for one, actually like the fact that there is a group whose purpose is to ultimately make the government accountable to the People and the Constitution. After all, who REALLY has kept the government in check? The People? Powerless due to the established system set in place by Federalists years ago (Vote one @$$hole out and vote a new @$$hole in... really? Open up the possibility of a NON-career politician being elected and I might consider this valid.). The Judicial Branch? Puppets of the rest of the government. The Constitution? How does a piece of paper curb the excess of the government if no one will help support the ideas inscribed on it? It can't. Hence, I feel that the Oathkeepers need to seriously be MORE of a thing.
Not defending Davis, of course, because she could have easily prevented the situation from arising in the first place (Let someone else sign the paper! Christians are only accountable for what they THEMSELVES do, unless it is something that can prevent real, bodily harm to an innocent person.), but neither will I defend Colonial Era Britain-style tactics where the government has unlimited power that can be exercised at the expense of personal liberties.
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Extremist right-wing militia sends armed lunatics to "protect" Kim Davis from US marshals. Right, this will end well.....
this reminds me of that idiot rancher in Nevada
this will not end well
Extremist right-wing militia sends armed lunatics to "protect" Kim Davis from US marshals. Right, this will end well.....To be fair, Stewart Rhodes does have a fair point in regards to this.
No, he doesn't. I can't think of a single way that the situation could be improved by firing on law enforcement.
And of course the best way to do that is for an armed group of unelected, unappointed former military men with no particular legal training or knowledge of the particular case or decision in question decide for everyone what the Constitution means and take the law into their own hands.
And what has doing otherwise accomplished, other than fuel the notion that the government is the ultimate arbiter of each and every thing that exists within the United States, irregardless of personal rights or freedoms?
There were, history shows, several examples of such lines of thinking such as what you posit in Britain and the Colonies during the Colonial Era. What did that accomplish, exactly? Nothing, except for increasingly brutal shutdowns by the British government, via their puppet military.
Rights cannot be defended in oppressive governments without some form of semi-militant stance on the part of those whose rights are being trampled and their peers.
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Extremist right-wing militia sends armed lunatics to "protect" Kim Davis from US marshals. Right, this will end well.....this reminds me of that idiot rancher in Nevada
this will not end well
That rancher and everyone supporting him should have been arrested for sedition.
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My understanding is that Jesus' main point in that passage was not about separation of church and state. The trap that was laid for Jesus was to make a choice between the authorities, thereby causing him to give offence to either the Jews or the Romans. They marveled because in His response Jesus showed that He saw through their trap and His answer gave offence to neither. Jesus was using an illustration of a coin and the image on it. In making a reference to 'image-bearing', Jesus was making a reference to the Genesis account of creation, in which God made Man in His image - that is, just as the coin bears Caesar's image and so belongs to Caesar, so too does man bear God's image and so belong to God. Caesar's due as emperor was his taxes (and one might fealty as well), and God's due as God was the obedience of His created beings who bore His image, and both claims were legitimate.
Jesus' answer completely circumvented the trap that was laid for Him whilst enforcing the main message that Jesus was constantly reiterating - that humans should live in obedience to God. Jesus wasn't teaching separation of Church and State (would have been pointless when the Jews were already living in a society where their church was already completely separated from the Roman state), and was certainly not advocating that a person should only obey one or the other in different contexts. He was setting a higher bar of seeking obedience to God AND State as much as possible.
On that analysis, Jesus might have advised Ms Davis to resign rather than embark on her current course of action, for in so doing she would have kept her true to her beliefs as a Christian whilst also giving due consideration to her duties as a civil servant.
Or in other words, Jesus was commanding Christians to tackle to paladin dilemma even before Gygax came up with the concept of paladins, and taking the difficult path where necessary.
This is an interesting response...
The entirety of the passage wasn't relevant to my point, but you are correct. The biblical scholars and leaders of the Jewish faith at the time thought they had devised a clever trap for Jesus. He instead hit them with some wisdom, with a hint of "duh", and a shrug. The words were wise, regardless of the circumstance in which they are uttered.However, my point was about Jesus understanding that there should be a separation between a person's faith, and civic identity or duty.
In all of His other teachings, he stresses the relationships Christians are to have with other people. "Do unto others" and "Love thy neighbor".
There are no caveats. I don't think Jesus would council Davis to quit, He would lovingly rebuke her, and assure her that He did not need her to defend Him, and while she may have the best intentions, is doing more harm than good. That perhaps if she had paid attention, she could indeed do her job at no risk to her faith. If she felt that a gay person was a sinner, that that is between God and that person, and not for a civil county clerk to worry about. "Judge not" might even get brought up. But also, that no matter what her opinion of those gay people is, she still has a duty to uphold the law, or "render unto Caesar" as it were.
In short, there is no conflict; her duty to Jesus is to show His love to others, and her duty to the state is to issue the license.
Armed vigilantes are not a substitute for legal process. They cannot be allowed to be.
Then who does?
And I'm sure the British thought the same thing of those 'armed vigilante colonists, going about and wrecking our perfect order'.
#AndoranFreedomBabyFTW!
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Armed vigilantes are great.. when they agree with you.
Armed government that can enforce laws is great... when the law agrees with you.
So you think we're at the stage where armed rebellion and violent overthrow of the government is proper approach?
Not yet, which is why it is more important to stop a growing problem before it grows to the point where it becomes necessary for such things as an armed rebellion.
I hardly call stopping the government from trampling citizen's rights, by using the THREAT of force, to be equivalent to an 'armed rebellion' or a 'violent overthrow of the government'.
And you never did answer my question, by the way. If not those with the means to police the government, who DOES? If you can find me a suitable candidate for helping curb big government strongarm tactics, then please, feel free to list it here. While you try to find one, I will just believe as I have for years that there should be a stronger method of keeping the government in check than is present in our country today.
EDIT: Responding to your edit, I am not debating whether or not HER actions were right or not, as I clearly stated that I disagreed with her handling of the situation, I am debating the clearly overwrought reply to her actions. If people can be jailed for contempt of court based on personal moral/religious decisions, right or wrong, then what is the point in having laws defending religious freedom or the freedom to think and believe what we want to believe? Is it not more the point that the law should be changed to allow for those under people in similar positions to sign otherwise legal documents? This scenario was used solely to prove a point and make an example out of someone.
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And of course the best way to do that is for an armed group of unelected, unappointed former military men with no particular legal training or knowledge of the particular case or decision in question decide for everyone what the Constitution means and take the law into their own hands.And what has doing otherwise accomplished, other than fuel the notion that the government is the ultimate arbiter of each and every thing that exists within the United States, irregardless of personal rights or freedoms?
There were, history shows, several examples of such lines of thinking such as what you posit in Britain and the Colonies during the Colonial Era. What did that accomplish, exactly? Nothing, except for increasingly brutal shutdowns by the British government, via their puppet military.
Rights cannot be defended in oppressive governments without some form of semi-militant stance on the part of those whose rights are being trampled and their peers.
So here's my issue with that stance: She is a government official tasked with carrying out government-appointed duties. As Orfamay and others so beautifully explained, she cannot be fired. She has no boss, and the people have no recourse save suing her for failing to perform her duty.
She's not the oppressed. She's the oppressor. You can't refuse to do your job, then sue your employer for getting fired.
As many have explained, her situation is far more complicated as she cannot be fired. She can step down, or the judge can fine or jail her. It's that simple. That's the law in this situation. She chose to stick to her guns and refuse to do her job, knowing full well she'd be jailed for it.
I have no sympathy, and I hardly consider it "oppression" to tie up hundreds of peoples' time and effort to deal with one woman's stubborn refusal to quit a job she is no longer suited for.
I've walked away from jobs on moral grounds before. It's not hard.
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Since you're obviously active, I'll do you the courtesy of posting separately: If she were working for a private company, and refusing to serve gays on moral grounds, I'd be far more sympathetic towards her. If the government made any sense and had the ability to just fire her, and jailed her instead, I'd again be extremely sympathetic.
The Kentucky legislature messed up big-time in implementing how their clerks are managed, probably figuring, "What kind of trouble can a clerk get into?"
And she's paying the price for bad government of the past, not bad government of the present.
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And she's paying the price for bad government of the past, not bad government of the present.
I'm not even sure of that. I think, from her point of view, protecting her income source is more important than spending a few days in jail (or accumulating a few fines that some wealthy donor will pay). The price would be actually losing her job.
You said "I've walked away from jobs on moral grounds before. It's not hard." It may be harder for her. Her job pays $80,000 per year. The per capita income in Rowan County, KY, is just over $23,000 a year, and the median household income almost exactly $43,000. She, by herself, is making double what her neighbors make as a couple.
And it's not like she seems to have mad job skillz. She seems to be a career politician with no real grasp of administrative law or public policy, which mean her chances of finding a similar job if she loses this one are low-ish.
I think she's relying on what you called "bad government of the past" to shelter her from any serious long-term consequences of her actions. If this had been California, she would have been fired in mid-July. The fact that she's still getting a paycheck despite not even showing up to work,.... well, that's truly special.
ETA: My apologies. I read the wrong column in the Census data. The numbers I cited are for Kentucky as a whole. Per capital income for Rowan County is $17,000; median household income is $35,000. So she makes more than twice what her neighbors do as a couple.
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Armed vigilantes are great.. when they agree with you.
Armed government that can enforce laws is great... when the law agrees with you.
Which is why the law brings in armed thugs only as a last resort, to minimize the possibility of armed conflict.
The process server who brings you a subpoena probably doesn't even carry a gun. The judge who hears your case likewise. If it gets to the point where you're dealing with guys with holsters on their hips, things have already gone dreadfully wrong; if you see anyone actually carrying a weapon around, you're in serious trouble.
The Oathbreakers terrorist militia seem to want to jump straight to DEFCON 4.
I hope their ill-advised actions don't result in anyone getting hurt. Not even them, and certainly not anyone who isn't in blatant and violent violation of Federal law.
So here's my issue with that stance: She is a government official tasked with carrying out government-appointed duties. As Orfamay and others so beautifully explained, she cannot be fired. She has no boss, and the people have no recourse save suing her for failing to perform her duty.
Did she fail to perform her duty? Yes. Multiple courts have agreed that her duty was to issue those licenses.
Did the plaintiffs take the appropriate course of action? Yes. Again, as explained, their recourse was to sue.
Did the court act legally? According to the law, yes. It did not have the authority to fire her. The judge (and I believe all of us) are aware that fines will have little impact on her, as many will step up to pay them. The judge's options were, "Fines, jail, or ignore the problem". Given those choices, I believe he acted soundly.
Did she have other recourse? Obviously, and this is the one that truly offends me. "I will no longer perform my job as dictated by my 'employer', but I still want to keep the job and continue to be paid.
She's not the oppressed. She's the oppressor. You can't refuse to do your job, then sue your employer for getting fired.As many have explained, her situation is far more complicated as she cannot be fired. She can step down, or the judge can fine or jail her. It's that simple. That's the law in this situation. She chose to stick to her guns and refuse to do her job, knowing full well she'd be jailed for it.
I have no sympathy, and I hardly consider it "oppression" to tie up hundreds of peoples' time and effort to deal with one woman's stubborn refusal to quit a job she is no longer suited for.
I've walked away from jobs on moral grounds before. It's not hard.
Then the issue at hand is the fact that the current system of law is inflexible, which can cause situations like this.
A person should not have to choose between their job or their conscience just because the system is not flexible enough to accommodate, considering that the current laws were not the same ones that were in place when she took her job.
A similar circumstance would be, say, if a cook for the White House was Jewish and had been put in charge of, say, cooking desserts or some other thing. Then, without warning, half of the kitchen staff are laid off (Doubtful, but consider the possibility!) and they tell him that he MUST fix meals containing pork. Now, considering that pork is considered unclean and, by definition, contact with unclean things causes the person themself to become unclean, he may object to that and refuse to cook pork. Since he is, let's presume, a government employee and he is not doing his job, they offer him the chance to fix the meal or quit, rather than allowing an underchef to cook the meal. Is that right? You cannot, morally at least, change the way that something works and expect to NOT have to make some accommodations of some sort to your employees, ways to work around sensitive issues.
And you illustrate my point perfectly with that next post you made, as she is suffering from the lack of sensible government laws that take EVERYTHING into account, rather than just half-baked laws that were made by people who have no idea how it interacts with state laws and creates situations like this.
What overwrought reply? When your moral decision is not only not do your job, but to prevent anyone in your government office from doing their job, what should the court's response be? "Oh sorry, you said the magic 'religious freedom' words, I guess gay people can't get married in this county. Any other parts of your job you disagree with?"
Isn't Kim Davis's stand itself government interfering with people's rights? Why aren't you up in arms about that? Why weren't the Oathkeepers coming to town to escort same-sex couples in to get their marriage licenses?
The overwrought reply: we will not accommodate you by removing your name, and thus your moral endorsement, from the documents, we expect you to relent or face the consequences. We are aware that there was no expectation of moral conflict when you took this position, but this is not our problem, as we sign your check, so screw your personal religious views. Oh, you don't relent? Let's stick you in jail for an undefined amount of time without giving you bail, because we're government and we're always right!
Why am I not openly waging war on her for being a bigot? Two reasons. Reason the first, the lynch mob mentality is already established without me having to add my voice to it. Reason the second, she has rights of her own, which did not receive proper accommodation by the system that she works under.
I have an uncle, an aunt, and a cousin, who is like a sibling to me, who are all homosexual, so I am sympathetic to that side of the argument. I just do not believe in forming a lynch mob to target people that disagree on a personal, religious level, jailing people for exercising their OWN rights.
Which is why the law brings in armed thugs only as a last resort, to minimize the possibility of armed conflict.
I am not so sure that is as valid of an argument these days.
These days, increasingly so in the last few years, the law ARE the armed thugs.
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Then the issue at hand is the fact that the current system of law is inflexible, which can cause situations like this.
I would LOVE to 100% agree with you on this, but if you study the history of law you find that whenever you add flexibility to the law, the scumbags in charge of implementing the law use it to their advantage.
If you add flexibility, you get nepotism and power grabs. If you remove flexibility, you get situations such as this one. There's no "one right answer" here.
A person should not have to choose between their job or their conscience just because the system is not flexible enough to accommodate, considering that the current laws were not the same ones that were in place when she took her job.
Here I get to disagree with you from personal experience. I took a tenure-track job where they said, "Your job is to educate the kids to the best of your ability."
Six months later, they took me in to the office and said, "Your job is to pass 2/3 of the students, whether or not they are learning anything."
I resigned two weeks later.
If you are going to claim the moral high ground, you have to take it.
EDIT: And responding to Orfamay's original reply to me, yes, I had it a lot easier than her. I was only making a math professor's salary, so I could have practically gotten a job at Burger King for the same pay. (I think it was $42k.) I also had a Ph.D. and 5 years of experience.
So while I was terrified when I quit from a tenure-track job with no prospects and a serious possibility of losing my lodgings, I was in no "real" danger: I had my parents as a safety net ("Hi, Mom! I'm home!") and a pretty solid resume to lean on. As it was, a tech company picked me up in all of 2 weeks.
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Requesting accommodations has a process, though. When he was notified that his responsibilities would include cooking bacon in the morning, that's the time to deal with it. Not when someone orders the bacon and telling them they can't have it.
At that point the analogy is difficult to continue since a court wouldn't get involved other than in a potential wrongful termination suit.
But more to your general point, I don't want to be governed by the angriest. If someone has a legitimate grievance and they don't get a fair shake in the courts, we can talk then. But I think the persecution of Christians, in anyone's reasonable assessment of it it, is less than the persecution of blacks in the Jim Crow South. Or in apartheid South Africa. And those were resolved by peaceful protest (although with some surrounding violence that had aligned goals).
And to the British example, India was granted independence in significant part due to peaceful protest.
The problem is that the overwrought reply you're disapproving of isn't that overwrought. She was explicitly offered the very accommodation you suggested of removing her name, and she rejected it. As has been mentioned in this very thread, they had no real obligation to offer her that compromise, and they still did, and she still refused it.
These days, increasingly so in the last few years, the law ARE the armed thugs.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this statement, but, in this case, I totally disagree with your spin on the Kim Davis scenario.
There was plenty of flexibility there -- which she pointedly used her position to refuse to allow, because she just hates gay people that much. If she had refused to sign their licenses, but didn't interfere with the other clerks' decisions, that would have been an act of conscience, and none of this would be happening. If she had stepped down in protest, that would have been an act of conscience, and none of this would be happening.
But she did neither of those things. She hijacked a government office in order to oppress specific citizens. There is nothing anti-totalitarian in that; quite the reverse. There is nothing noble or virtuous in that. There is nothing remotely defensible in that.
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I've walked away from jobs on moral grounds before. It's not hard.
You probably have skills beyond "nepotism" and "running unopposed"
The problem is that the overwrought reply you're disapproving of isn't that overwrought. She was explicitly offered the very accommodation you suggested of removing her name, and she rejected it. As has been mentioned in this very thread, they had no real obligation to offer her that compromise, and they still did, and she still refused it.
Do you have evidence of this? All that I have seen on this thread and the news (I don't watch Fox, just as an aside!) is that they were asking her underclerks to sign it. That did not eliminate the issue of her name being on the paper.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this statement, but, in this case, I totally disagree with your spin on the Kim Davis scenario.
There was plenty of flexibility there -- which she pointedly used her position to refuse to allow, because she just hates gay people that much. If she had refused to sign their licenses, but didn't interfere with the other clerks' decisions, that would have been an act of conscience, and none of this would be happening. If she had stepped down in protest, that would have been an act of conscience, and none of this would be happening.
But she did neither of those things. She hijacked a government office in order to oppress specific citizens. There is nothing anti-totalitarian in that; quite the reverse. There is nothing noble or virtuous in that. There is nothing remotely defensible in that.
My whole point is that even if it had her name on the paper, it is still, to her credit, acknowledging that she is okay with the action. That's what the onus of my argument is. They didn't remove her name from the paper, which still made it seem, in her mind, to still place the burden of 'guilt' on her in some way. Hence, while I do not agree with her decision, I do defend her right to it.
What right is she being enjoined from exercising? The only one you can argue for his her right to put her religious beliefs over the constitutional rights of others. No one is forcing her to marry against her beliefs. No one is asking her to officiate over marriages she does not approve of. She was simply asked to perform the job she was elected to do for people who have a legal right to her services as County Clerk.
Her case has no more merit than that of the Muslim stewardess who was fired from her job for refusal to serve alcohol.
Freedom of religion is part one of the Bill of Rights. Freedom of bigotry is not.
How then do you arbitrate whose constitutional rights are worth more? You CAN'T. Both sides have constitutional protection. They did not offer a work-around which reasonably fit her conscience (Just REMOVE HER NAME FROM THE PAPER! Seriously!), they just shoehorned her into either losing her job/facing jail time/getting fined or quitting her job in an area with a poor job outlook and a VERY low annual income average.
The answer is to change the law to actually make sense, NOT jail someone with NO BAIL for an INDEFINITE amount of time for exercising their own, valid constitutional right of religious freedom.
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So here's my issue with that stance: She is a government official tasked with carrying out government-appointed duties. As Orfamay and others so beautifully explained, she cannot be fired. She has no boss, and the people have no recourse save suing her for failing to perform her duty.
Did she fail to perform her duty? Yes. Multiple courts have agreed that her duty was to issue those licenses.
Did the plaintiffs take the appropriate course of action? Yes. Again, as explained, their recourse was to sue.
Did the court act legally? According to the law, yes. It did not have the authority to fire her. The judge (and I believe all of us) are aware that fines will have little impact on her, as many will step up to pay them. The judge's options were, "Fines, jail, or ignore the problem". Given those choices, I believe he acted soundly.
Did she have other recourse? Obviously, and this is the one that truly offends me. "I will no longer perform my job as dictated by my 'employer', but I still want to keep the job and continue to be paid.
She's not the oppressed. She's the oppressor. You can't refuse to do your job, then sue your employer for getting fired.As many have explained, her situation is far more complicated as she cannot be fired. She can step down, or the judge can fine or jail her. It's that simple. That's the law in this situation. She chose to stick to her guns and refuse to do her job, knowing full well she'd be jailed for it.
I have no sympathy, and I hardly consider it "oppression" to tie up hundreds of peoples' time and effort to deal with one woman's stubborn refusal to quit a job she is no longer suited for.
I've walked away from jobs on moral grounds before. It's not hard.
Then the issue at hand is the fact that the current system of law is inflexible, which can cause situations like this.
A person should not have to choose between their job or their conscience just because the system is not flexible enough to accommodate, considering that the...
Allow me to tweak your analogy to more closely reflect reality.
Jewish chef gets a job in the White House as executive chef at such a time that a Jewish president was in office.
The next president comes in and wants some pulled pork sammiches.
Jewish chef says "no way"
Some strange law prevents the chef from being fired on the spot.
Courts say, "just have a sous chef make the damn sammiches."
Jewish Chef, "no one can make sammiches anymore! In fact the president will have no food of any kind ever again!"
Court says, "You will feed the president, and it will damn well be a sammich or you're going to jail."
Jewish chef, "NEVER AAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!"
Court says, "let him cool his heels in the clink, and some one make the president a sammich."
True enough, bad analogy.
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I agree that changing the law is a better option. As OQ has pointed out, the state of Kentucky wasn't a party to the suit, so the judge issuing orders to them would have been a significant overreach. The clerk should have separately sued the state of Kentucky or asked them for the accommodation.
So you're right that that's a better solution. It's not this judge's solution to grant.
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How then do you arbitrate whose constitutional rights are worth more? You CAN'T.
Well, you can't. And certainly not via a grotesque parody of medieval trial-by-combat involving mobs and firearms.
How arbitration is done in the United States is fairly simple. If the parties can't come to an agreement on their own, they go to a court of competent jurisdiction (for Federal questions, such as constitutional rights, that would be a Federal District Court, as established under Art. III of the Constitution). The judge is empowered to hear the dispute and arbitrate under the rules, which literally fill shelves (that's part of why law school costs $100,000 a year).
In this case, the parties were unable to reach an answer and, appropriately, suit was filed in District court. The plaintiffs outlined their version of events, Ms. Davis outlined hers, and the plaintiffs then moved for a preliminary injunction, which is something rather special. It's basically asking for a pre-decision decision (hence "preliminary"), which is only given (under the rules) under some special conditions.
It sounds like you're not familiar with the ruling, so here's a link. The rules say that there are four factors that need to be considered when making such a preliminary injunction, but they basically sum up to assume that everything Ms. Davis says is true, and construe everything she says in the best possible light. Does what she is asking make any sort of sense? Having looked at her claims in that way, Judge Benning decided that no, it doesn't make sense, and issued the injunction in accordance with what the rules said.
Now, you (and Davis) might think that he made the wrong decision -- maybe he misinterpreted the rules. Fortunately, the rules themselves provide an answer. First, Benning delayed his ruling pending appeal, basically giving other judges a chance to look over his shoulder and check his work. Davis could and did then appeal the decision (in this case, to the 6th Circuit), where three more judges (Keith, Rogers, and Donald) looked at it. They decided -- as far as I can tell unanimously, but at least two out of three -- that Davis was in the wrong and that the injunction had been granted correctly and in accord with the rules.
Of course, the rules don't stop there. Davis could and did ask another panel of judges to look at it, the Supreme Court of the United States. It takes four judges of nine to grant cert to hear a case; the SCOTUS (as a unit) did not grant cert. Therefore, of the nine judges, at least six agreed that the decision was correct. [In the interests of completeness, there's one other possibility. Justice Kagan could have looked at it and decided that the appeal was so pants-wettingly stupid that she didn't want to waste her colleagues' time with it, which is possibly more likely.]
So we've had 13 judges (1 + 3 + 9) look at this case, and at least ten, possibly all, of those judges are in agreement that the injunction was correctly decided.
Now, someone else comes along and says "the case was wrongly decided." As far as I can tell, that is absolutely Alice-in-Wonderland, tinfoil-hat, Obama-is-a-Muslim-lizard delusional, wrong to the point of being laughable. Bear in mind that if there were any actual controversy, the injunction would not have been given. And the solution espoused is instead to have unelected, self-appointed gun nuts wandering around threatening to fire on law enforcement officers if they attempt to obey the legitimate rulings obtained under rule of law.
This conversation has been civil so far, so I'll stop there.
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Requesting accommodations has a process, though. When he was notified that his responsibilities would include cooking bacon in the morning, that's the time to deal with it. Not when someone orders the bacon and telling them they can't have it.
Especially when long-standing case law, dating back nearly 50 years, has established a fundamental constitutional right to bacon. (Wow, what an amazingly bad analogy.)
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Armed vigilantes are great.. when they agree with you.
Armed government that can enforce laws is great... when the law agrees with you.
Which is why the law brings in armed thugs only as a last resort, to minimize the possibility of armed conflict.
So the main difference between the two is... the RSVP? :)
Anything that delays this couple their rights while causing a media circus isn't really working, though. If this woman is likely to continue being elected and be close enough to having the authority to do something like this that it takes a court and jail time to give the impression of stopping her, something needs to change.
Is taking her name off it a good option? Maybe, but maybe the precedent it sets is more damaging than it's worth.
What I feel strongly about, though, is that she should have asked for accommodation and sued or not. I think this kind of claim is better as a plaintiff than a defendant. Then she can make an informed decision about resigning or not.
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So the main difference between the two is... the RSVP? :)Armed vigilantes are great.. when they agree with you.
Armed government that can enforce laws is great... when the law agrees with you.
Which is why the law brings in armed thugs only as a last resort, to minimize the possibility of armed conflict.
No, the timing.
First, we sit down like reasonable human beings and try to resolve our differences.
If that doesn't work, we get a neutral third party to sit down like a reasonable human being and try to resolve our differences.
If that doesn't work (I don't like the resolution he offers), I get a group of three more people to sit down like reasonable human beings and see what resolution they come up with, having seen the proposed resolution from the first person.
If that still doesn't work, I can ask nine other people to sit down like reasonable human beings and see if there's anything wrong with the solution proposed by the first panel in light of the solution of the lone arbiter.
And if that still doesn't work -- if everyone's looked at it and said that I should just STFU and go home, and I still am unwilling to go home, the first arbiter (remember him?) is required to tell me, "look, if you don't STFU and go home, I'm going to make you come and explain why I shouldn't send the thugs after you."
As a sixth step -- count them, this is step number 6 -- if I don't obey, I still get a chance to explain why the armed thugs shouldn't be sent after me.
You don't see a difference between "halt, or I'll shoot!" and "halt, or I'll say 'halt' at least five more times, giving you a chance to present your counterproposal at each step, and then shoot?"