Mormon apostle Oaks: Kentucky clerk wrong not to issue same-sex marriage licenses

[Newsjock]

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, cannot use her Christian faith as a justification for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gays, a high-ranking Mormon authority said Tuesday.

Public officials "are not free to apply personal convictions — religious or other — in place of the defined responsibilities of their public offices," LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks said in a speech in Sacramento, Calif. "A county clerk's recent invoking of religious reasons to justify refusal by her office and staff to issue marriage licenses to same-gender couples violates this principle."

... Advocates on both sides of the gay-rights divide have weighed in on Davis' actions, including many Mormons and other Christians defending the clerk, but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been silent — until now.

In a carefully worded address at the Second Annual Sacramento Court/Clergy Conference titled "The Boundary Between Church and State," Oaks argued for balance and good sense between religious freedoms and civil liberties.

Read more: http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/3082891-155/mormon-apostle-oaks-kentucky-clerk-wrong

[hifiguy]

1. That will leave a mark.

I must say I am mightily surprised to hear something that sensible coming from a Mormon, given the Mormon involvement in Cal's Prop 8.

[gratuitous]

2. Agreed

Although deeper in Mormon history is a rather bloody legacy of defying governmental authority in the name of religious conviction. But the apostle is correct in his statement. It's not like the people of the county have another clerk they can go to for official business, and the government official has to serve all the people, not just the ones she likes.