Off Of The Top Of My Head---

You could grow old and die waiting for Megan McArdle to plink out a post. She has finally decided to do her job, ironically about someone who she notes refused to do her job, with a post that must have taken all of 15 minutes to create.

A Kentucky clerk has been ordered to jail for refusing to issue licenses for gay marriages. This seems like a tad bit of an overreaction. Unfortunately, it's what we've come to in the culture wars.

Tell that to the Republican judge who knew that she'd just sob and whine until conservatives paid her fines for her.

I'll start by stating my priors: I believe in very strong protections for freedom of conscience, religious and otherwise.

She's a libertarian who believes that the government should protect your feelings instead of letting the free market do the punishing for her.

That means I believe that Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has a perfect right to oppose gay marriage, and indeed, to refuse to issue those marriage licenses. But she does not have a right to refuse to issue those licenses while still remaining county clerk.

McArdle goes on to say that you should be able to do what you want but you should not expect to keep a job you refuse to perform at the same time.

The judge made absolutely the right choice, much as I rue the necessity. Rule of law is one of the most important things between us and barbarianism. No, it is never perfect, but it is better than the alternative. It has to be preserved no matter which side is the target. Conservatives who applauded the Hobby Lobby decision and now applaud Kim Davis should take a long, hard think about how they'd feel if President Obama took a bold stand for freedom of conscience by slapping Hobby Lobby with fines in open defiance of the Supreme Court. If you think that only the other side has to obey laws they don't like, then you are not in favor of the rule of law. You are in favor of law as a crude tool for the raw exercise of power -- and when you are in a minority, as the opponents of gay marriage are, then you should carefully consider where this is likely to end up.

Unfortunately, the sheer volume of the culture war makes it hard to ask those questions. It's much easier to ask "my team or yours"? And where that ends up is absurd results like a county clerk going to jail, instead of quietly going to work somewhere more suited to her religious principles.

It's scarcely absurd for someone to go to jail for contempt of court but whatever. Rule of law, bitchez!

Many of her readers do not appreciate her even-handedness. Freedom of association! Pizza parlors and cake bakers! Obummercare!  Sanctuary cities! Legal weed! Will the jackboot never stop stomping??