I didn’t really want to talk about Kim Davis, County Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Last week, she got put in jail for not doing her job; this week, she got released.
Generally, I’m for people doing their jobs. Especially, those in government.
However, when they are instructed to do something destructive, I’d prefer they refrain. Unfortunately, government workers too often select the wrong things not to enforce. I could use a lot more “blue flu” over Drug War efforts, or stealing our property through civil forfeiture, or shooting pet dogs.
No such luck, usually.
Recently, a 17-year-old boy was charged, as an adult, for child pornography. But the “child porn” was a naked picture of his own body on his very own cell phone. A law designed to protect him from sexual exploitation was turned against him, making him a “sexual predator.”
The police and prosecutor in this North Carolina case didn’t really do their jobs.
In Washington County, Pennsylvania, a barbershop has been fined $750 for refusing to cut one woman’s hair. The owner claims he has nothing against doing women’s hair, but merely that this particular shop wasn’t set up to handle women’s typical hair concerns. Public servants fined him anyway.
Do we really need government to patrol beauty salons and barbershops for “discrimination” “crimes”?
After all, they cannot even patrol themselves coherently. Witness the messy case of Kim Davis, Democratic County clerk in rural Kentucky. About which I hope I need not say more.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Just Doing Our Jobs?”
It a Brave New World and certainly post-1984 society. Everything is controlled, and every violation is a crime.
Thought crime is recognized and punished. This is not progress, it Is madness.
Kim Davis was jailed for following a law which was still on the books, which was the law when she was elected and took her oath of office,
Rule to be learned:
Never confuse legal and moral, they are different concepts, and although the law can be abruptly changed, morality cannot.
Kim Davis was jailed for defying a court order. Not only did she refuse to do her job (for which there was ample accommodation), she instructed her clerks to refuse to do the same job. She used the power of her office to deny rights to others. Once the higher courts refused to hear her case, she was duty-bound to follow the law. She didn’t. She abused the power of her office. If she doesn’t want her name on marriage licenses she has an alternative: she can resign her office. Instead, she wants to have her cake and eat it, too.
I understand your position, and there are points when you have to refuse to comply on moral grounds, and accept the consequences of your moral statement.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Like everything else government does, these examples are about nothing but control.