Judge Refuses To Marry Gay Couple

[Joel]

Well which type of employee or official the state thinks is best to task with this administrative task seems arbitrary.

It's not arbitrary. The state could pay high salaries to brain surgeons, lawyers, or aerospace engineers to do the job, and that would be terribly wasteful, reducing the capacity for other goals to be achieved.
Also your comment presumes that the state must do this task in the first place.

As it stands, the current situation is that the state employs certain people using tax-payer money to do a job of a certain description, and that job description currently involves performing marriage ceremonies. If people, for personal reasons, don't want to perform the tasks specified in the job description then they should apply for a different job.

We aren't primarily talking about people applying for the job; we are talking about people who are judges right now.
Thus you are making the same stupid argument JimL made.
As it stands, the current situation is that the state is employing the judge. You are proposing a change in the situation (the judge ceases to be a judge, or the state changes its hiring practices), just as I am proposing a change in the situation. You can't argue against my solution merely because it is a change in the situation. If that were a valid argument, then it would rule out all proposed solutions, including yours.

Given that we are both proposing a change, we'd have to discuss which one is the better one. I argue that mine is better because it addresses the root cause of the problem, rather than trying to treat a symptom in a way that has various bad side-effects.

If we are going to insist, as we should, that "I was only following orders" is never a valid excuse for public officials, then we must therefore allow for conscientious objections.

That's an absolutely ridiculous argument. They don't have to follow orders - they are 100% to submit their resignations at any time.

You are suggesting here that the only allowance for conscientious objection is ability to quit. But that would result in excluding from public office all those who have any moral qualms about what the government does. That is a recipe for corruption and injustice. Consider the defense department. Would you prefer that it be filled only with yes-men, or that it have some personnel who have a conscience?

- You must be wary that making certain things a required part of a public official's job can create effective discrimination by the state. For example, it would be one thing for a private club to permit only Christians as members or leaders. Another thing for a state to effectively exclude non-Christians from public office, yes?

If someone's own level of discrimination and intolerance of others limits their ability to serve all the public, such a person should probably not be involved in a public service role employed by the tax-payer.

So.. your reply amounts to saying that if a judge's duties included religious rites (say praying for people), you would conclude that atheists should just not be judges.
If a judge's duties included tasting pork, you would conclude that Jews and vegetarians should just not be judges.
(Either that, or your reply isn't actually a response to what I said.)

That reasoning could be used to shoot down any proposed solution to any problem.

Fellow "liberal": Maybe that judge shouldn't be a judge any more.
JimL: Sounds fine by me, but that is not the way things are, so, though its a good point, its a moot one.

Fellow "liberal": Perhaps the state should carefully select whom they employ as judges and or clerks in order to insure no conflict with their job assignments.
JimL: Sounds fine by me, but that is not the way things are, so, though its a good point, its a moot one.

Consistently using that reasoning would mean never doing anything.

No, it doesn't mean that at all. What it means is that an employer is only required to employ those people who are able to do the job required of them. Employers do discriminate in that way you know, thats why people educate themselves for certain jobs. If they weren't qualified, they wouldn't be hired. Having a conscientious objection to the job requirement would disqualify them for the job.

This is not a response to what I said. Perhaps you replied to the wrong post?
Your comments here are all things I've addressed above.

I'd agree, generally speaking, if the statute was unjust or immoral.

So freedom of conscience for everyone, but only when they agree with you?

But it's neither, and that is the larger issue prohibition's proponents are not addressing. Given years to muster arguments, they've failed. Not only have they failed to show same sex marriage is unjust, not only have they failed to convince secular society that it's immoral, but they've failed to convince their fellow adherents as well.

I'm not interested in disputing any of that. That's not what I'm saying.

You can't claim this discriminates against Christians when entire denominations of Christians stand against you.

The smallest minority is a minority of one person, and would still be discrimination.
And I'm not even talking about religious exemptions. I'm talking about conscientious objection by anyone, including atheists.

Calling this statute unjust or immoral is simply begging the question. If you don't show this, folks aren't going to follow along. And you haven't, so we won't.

I'm not calling it unjust or immoral. I'm saying that there, obviously, are people who think it is.
And sure, there are folks (apparently you, included?) who trample on people who disagree with them: "Freedom for me, not for thee." Those folks are mean.

On the contrary, walking up to someone, saying, "My religion tells me I have to discriminate against you" is unjust, and immoral, and obviously so.

That's not how discrimination works. Discrimination is not active, like that; it is passive: it is declining, when someone comes up to you, wanting to interact with you in a certain way.
No means no. To continue to impose it upon you when you say no is unjust.

The status quo ante was discrimination

And the current situation regarding legal "marriage" is also discrimination: against the polyamorous, against close relatives, against single people.