Judge Releases Bigoted County Clerk From Jail - For Now

U.S. District Court Judge David Banning has released Kentucky County Clerk from jail. He said there was no reason to keep her in jail since other clerks in her office are issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But he issued a warning, telling her that she:

“shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.”

The question now is -- what will she do when she returns to work? Will she allow the other clerks in her office to continue issuing those marriage licenses (as the law demands), or will she once again order them to not issue same-sex marriage licenses. She has not stated publicly what she'll do, but her lawyers believe she will stop the issuing of the licenses. If she does, she will be sent right back to jail.

And the judge would be right to send her back to jail. Regardless of religious belief, elected officials (and unelected government officials) must abide by the law. Allowing officials to pick and choose which laws they will obey and which laws they will ignore simply cannot be allowed. Federal law must be obeyed in all cities, counties, and states, or anarchy will be the result -- and the very authority of the Constitution will be destroyed.

If she truly cannot obey the law without denying her own religious beliefs, then she should resign and find a job that she can do without violating her religious beliefs. Same-sex couples have the same right to marry as any other citizen does. That's the law, and she must obey it.

A couple of presidential candidates showed up at her release to try and make some political hay out of the situation -- Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee. That might help them with some Republican evangelicals in the party primaries, but it's sure not going to help them if they make it to the general election. Two thirds of Americans believe officials should obey the law -- even if it violates their religious beliefs (see chart below).

The chart was made from information in a new Rasmussen Poll -- done on September 6th and 7th of a random national sample of 1,000 likely voters, with a 3 point margin of error.