The New York Times was one of the few news outlets to pick up on an angle of the "gay marriage is now legal in New York" story, a fact that Get Religion once again highlights with their normal excellent insight. What stood out in the coverage for me was not that all the papers missed it; it's that all the papers did pretty much what I expected them to do—assume that people would just do their jobs.
Laura Fotusky is a court clerk in Barker, N.Y. She resigned her position rather give marriage licenses to gay couples. Apparently, according to her reading, the Bible forbids it. Sigh. There really isn't much left to be said that hasn't already been said on this issue. Christians and Muslims, people of all conservative faiths, or people with conservative "values," are going to have to figure out how to live with the rest of us. Should we expect servers to conscientiously object to serving gay couples? Should we expect companies, like the Christian DJ in another story, to refuse to work at same sex wedding ceremonies and receptions? Is it utterly impossible to do your damn job if you disagree with the parties you are serving?
I am symapthetic to the Christian pharmacist who refuses to dispense abortifacients; the gravity of that decision far outweighs the decision to hand someone a legal document to which they have a constitutional right, especially when that document won't lead to a life/death moral quandary. Call it graded absolutism or whatever you want to call it; it's simply a different category of moral decision making. However, I have no sympathy for the person in a government job who feels she can't do her job when she disagrees with the morals of the citizens she's supposed to serve. I guess I'm supposed to appreciate that Ms. Fotusky resigned, and I do appreciate that she won't be selling her own brand of religious bullshit to the happy couples that would otherwise have been at her window, but I still think it's a failure to think like a good citizen of a pluralistic republic. Can you do your job even when you disagree with the morality of those you serve and keep your Christian faith in tact? Can you separate your faith from your job just to the degree that you afford fellow citizens the rights and respect you expect yourself? This doesn't seem a difficult task.
