Southern Baptist official: Rather than refuse to issue gay marriage licenses, Alabama judges should resign
Predicting that the U.S. Supreme Court is about to legalize gay marriage, the chief ethicist for the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, is advising Alabama judicial functionaries to resign rather than continue to refuse to issue marriage licenses.
A partial statement from Russell Moore, president of president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, via Baptist Press:
"We shouldn't have officials breaking the law, but civil servants don't surrender their conscience simply by serving in government. While these details are being worked out, in the absence of any conscience protections, a government employee faced with a decision of violating his conscience or upholding the law, would need to resign and protest against it as a citizen if he could not discharge the duties of his office required by law in good conscience.
"Given the high bar required for civil disobedience, the way to address same-sex marriage in this circumstance is not by defying the rule of law, but by making our case before the legitimate authorities. If we lose, our responsibility is to advocate as citizens for our views, even if that project is (as in the case of the pro-life movement) a long-term project, while we work for our constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and religious liberty."
About the Author
Jim Galloway, the newspaper’s former political columnist, was a writer and editor at the AJC for four decades.
