Kim Davis

No.

More succinctly I'd say resigning is an indication that you, as an Orthodox Christian, refuse to play along with an immoral system. By working there, you are complicit in a sinful activity and refuse to have your hands tainted by it. You are true to yourself, religion, and by being dragged out of there in handcuffs you COULD either be showing great faith and a good example or you could be a cheesy photo op and be seeking a type of glory for yourself.

Take me for example. If I am forced, back against the wall, under observation, full realization by my administrator that I am NOT teaching LGBT stuff in the classroom, and my principal says he's going to come to my room to watch me teach Harvey Milk Sodomy Awareness Day, I would tell him politely, "Mr. _________, I'm sorry. I can't teach that. It not only goes against my faith, but the moral precedents of 3,000 years of civilization world-wide that even goes beyond Western Judeo-Christian culture. I cannot and will not teach it." Then if he tries to force me again, I'll file a grievance citing religious refusal. When I lose the grievance and am forced again, I resign after using up sick days and such LOL.

Then I would use my time to either work in a private school where such evils are not taught, or start a home-schooling setup for others, or try to start my own private school with my church? Heck, I don't know.

But refusing to play ball and then resigning is about all we can do short of holding a stick of dynamite in our hands and threatening to blow ourselves up in front of the place of business...shrug.

rusmeister said:

So can people at least agree that this is what resigning means, or at least upon demand if not this moment, and that some of you think this is what we should do?

Click to expand...

I think that resigning, in the private sphere, is something of last resort. I think it comes up slightly earlier in the calculus for a public employee. But Kim Davis had options available that would have allowed her to not resign and not issue licenses while also complying with the court. She only had to allow deputies to issue licenses.

gzt said:

I think that resigning, in the private sphere, is something of last resort. I think it comes up slightly earlier in the calculus for a public employee. But Kim Davis had options available that would have allowed her to not resign and not issue licenses while also complying with the court. She only had to allow deputies to issue licenses.

Click to expand...

...issue them, but with her signature on them as the authorizing party. Anyone should be able to see how that wasn't much of a solution.

katherine2001 said:

But she CHOSE to run for the very office that would require her to issue a marriage license to anyone who meets the legal requirements for the office.

Click to expand...

I consider that to be a very unpersuasive argument in this case. When she ran, she did not intend--nor do most officeholders--to uphold some law that didn't exist at the time. If it becomes law in the USA in, say, 2018, that you can marry your dog, are we seriously going to say to every County Clerk that "this is what you agreed to?" I don't think so.

It should have been obvious to her that same-sex marriage was going to be made legal during her 4 year term in office.

Click to expand...

And this is not even remotely true.

Rus,
Yes this sounds accurate. But they have already re-defined the marriage concept, and in many cases it was not the enemy of the faith but those that count themselves as christian that lobbied for it. Since this secular rite of passage that the west now practises (as of the last few months anyway) has nothing to do with what we call sacramental matrimony, its time to ditch this western model and go back to our roots, we need to learn from how things are done in the middleeast.

buzuxi02 said:

...we should ditch this western model and learn from how things are done in the middleeast.

Click to expand...

Probably should be a bit more specific with that advice.

Albion said:

...issue them, but with her signature on them as the authorizing party. Anyone should be able to see how that wasn't much of a solution.

Click to expand...

False, her signature would not have been on it. This was discussed earlier in the thread. HTH. HAND.

You have to read one or two of the earlier posts. None of my grandparents and quite a few of my other relatives ever had a civil agreement because civil marriages didn't exist in Greece before 1983. This is the same model still in use in Lebanon and Israel and I was informed by an Oriental Orthodox poster that the "millet" system is basically the norm for the entire middle east.

gzt said:

False, her signature would not have been on it. This was discussed earlier in the thread. HTH. HAND.

Click to expand...

I confess that I apparently did not read those posts. I am only going by what all the television news channels reported on the occasion of her release from jail and the supposed compromise that wouldn't work for Davis (for this very reason).

The TV reports are wrong if they said her signature had to appear. Her name would, as it is the "office of Kim Davis".

gzt said:

The TV reports are wrong if they said her signature had to appear. Her name would, as it is the "office of Kim Davis".

Click to expand...

It amounts to the same thing in her mind, and a reasonable person should be able to understand that. Actual signature or not, it's issued by her office under her name and authorization, just like some certificates most of us have received at one time or another that bear reproductions of signatures--the paper money we all use, for example.

It is quite different. And it doesn't have a reproduction of her signature. The form mentions the names of several other officials. No marriage is understood to have the explicit endorsement of, say, the governor, and I think it would be absurd for a governor with a religious conviction against homosexualist marriage to demur from issuing all marriage licenses in the state under those grounds. If they did, I would hope that a federal judge would hit them over the head with a newspaper. "Heavy is the head that eats the crayons," as they say.

Only Philadelphia lawyers would care about the distinction between one's signature and one's printed name. If MY name is on there, it doesn't matter a hoot whether it was printed or I signed it. It connects MY name with the approval of abomination. You can say how much you wouldn't care; I say ordinary people WILL care, and rightly so.

gurneyhalleck1 said:

But refusing to play ball and then resigning is about all we can do short of holding a stick of dynamite in our hands and threatening to blow ourselves up in front of the place of business...shrug.

Click to expand...

When you put it in that dichotomy, of course.

But what I see is you (guys) condemning Davis when she did neither. She chose to not resign, and NOT hold a stick of dynamite. And while you can certainly complain of grandstanding over Davis's release, I simply don't see how you can prior to that. As I understand matters, it was not she that dragged in the media and sought attention, but the homosexuals. It seems like you are saying that she sought out the attention and held a stick of dynamite, and the only reason we have any conflict here is that I see both ideas to be untrue.

If she was NOT grandstanding (and the salient point is her arrest, not release), then her resistance was of the peaceful Christian sort, that did not seek to show off, but to affirm truth that is not her personal opinion, but something we KNOW to be true. That is what I see, and that is what you guys deny, and I, frankly, do not see the basis for your claims of grandstanding and seeking attention. I see an eager media owned by people that want to railroad this through that literally want to crucify her for taking that approach of peaceful and passive resistance.

Whether or not she is trying to get attention, she got it. We know that much. Mike Huckabee is reveling in it! Look, this isn't a hill I want to die on debating. And I'm not going to put many more keystrokes into it. It's a moot point for you, Rus. You moved to Russia. You are thousands upon thousands of miles away from such matters. You put yourself in a much easier place with such moral quandaries seeing as how you live in a country that is not only Orthodox, but also has a cultural disdain for sodomites. So, and I mean this respectfully because I like and respect you, none of this really applies to you and it's just kind of tough-talking armchair quarterbacking. You'll never have to stand up to the liberal, humanist, secular atheist American authorities living in Russia.

As for me, I live in the People's Republic of Kalifornia where LGBT gaydom is being rammed down our throats quickly. And it IS aimed at education. As for now, nothing is really being enforced. In my area where folks are more conservative, I expect it to take some time..but make no mistake, IT WILL come. And I happen to be NO SAINT, but I hope being a guy who has been faithfully married to one woman for 16 years with 3 kids attending a Christian school and being an Orthodox Christian and everyone knowing my faith in my community, that if I were in a Kim Davis situation, I hope I'll be a more credible victim of the system than she is. I'm just not impressed with her. We can agree to disagree I guess.

But I will say I find it fascinating how we have places like New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles that call themselves "sanctuary cities" wherein they very vocally and proudly admit that they will NOT report illegal immigrants to Immigration services of the U.S. government, effectively admitting that they break the law and refuse to accept what they see as unjust stupidity in our legal system, and yet at the same time when Kim Davis has her own "sanctuary city" style refusal to play ball, unleash the hounds of hell....pretty absurd.

What I do know is that this gay crud affects all jobs, and it's not realistic for everyone to quit their jobs or refuse to do their jobs because of sodomy rulings by the supreme court.

Our jobs already require us to be too close to a multitude of sins as it is. At some point I just have to let God sort it all out, be the best dad I can be to teach my kids that sodomy and rainbow lifestyles are sick, twisted, unacceptable, and hell-bound behavior. I show my kids how to be a real man by being a good husband, straight, narrow, and being responsible. I just make sure my kids are surrounded by normalcy, we talk about this nonsense, and i keep my eye on the prize of Christ.

Probably nobody on TAW finds "homosexuality" more disgusting and unacceptable than me. I'm as opposed to LGBTism as it gets. But we can easily make this sick stuff an idol and an obsession, and I for one don't want that to happen. You've said it yourself that the Eye of Sauron Sin Machinery of our age is unstoppable. I agree. And eventually it'll hit your hamlet in Russia, probably after you're dead however and your kids are grandpas. Russia has some time left before it goes to hell with the rest of our nations. But eventually it will. You can't stop it. But you CAN live through it by tending to your little sheep, your kids, and preaching Christ Risen, showing the light in your home. Getting divorced three times then going to jail for a few days isn't the only way to fight the powers that be in this day and age.

My two cents...weak as they are.

rusmeister said:

When you put it in that dichotomy, of course.

But what I see is you (guys) condemning Davis when she did neither. She chose to not resign, and NOT hold a stick of dynamite. And while you can certainly complain of grandstanding over Davis's release, I simply don't see how you can prior to that. As I understand matters, it was not she that dragged in the media and sought attention, but the homosexuals. It seems like you are saying that she sought out the attention and held a stick of dynamite, and the only reason we have any conflict here is that I see both ideas to be untrue.

If she was NOT grandstanding (and the salient point is her arrest, not release), then her resistance was of the peaceful Christian sort, that did not seek to show off, but to affirm truth that is not her personal opinion, but something we KNOW to be true. That is what I see, and that is what you guys deny, and I, frankly, do not see the basis for your claims of grandstanding and seeking attention. I see an eager media owned by people that want to railroad this through that literally want to crucify her for taking that approach of peaceful and passive resistance.

Click to expand...

There's a lot there I can and do agree with.

I guess one remaining question would be regarding Davis's past. We're pretty big on insisting on God's forgiveness and mercy, particularly when a person repents. My impression is that, generally speaking, she has repented. I don't know, of course, maybe she thinks divorce is a fine thing and plans to do it next year. But it seems to me that we give each other the benefit of the doubt, and even heterodox Christians can be sorry for their past, and while the world will drag it up, it seems to me that as long as she's not crowing about and praising her divorces, we should grant that a person who seriously confesses Christ probably holds repentance and awareness of sin in a relatively important place in his or her life. We give ourselves a break on that, anyway, and assume that we have all repented.

So why treat her past as something she HASN'T repented of? Why refer to it as something she's probably going to continue doing or as something by which we should judge her sincerity now? I really doubt she holds her past sins and errors as something helpful in, as you say, fighting the powers-that-be.

On Russia, I think people on your end have a general impression that Russia is becoming Holy Russia again because Orthodoxy is currently fashionable. I don't think that's the case, I think important figures in the Church here are reproducing behaviors that provoked the tremendous backlash against faith in the Russian Revolution: turning blind eyes to both government injustices and outrageous behavior of people acting in the name of the Church. Most people don't seriously believe, nominalism is rife - and meaningless, they still import "Futurama", "Family Guy" and the rest of the c%$p from US TV affirming the normality of abnormality. The propaganda is chipping away here, too, if more slowly. I give us only ten years, give or take a few, to backlash.

And I AM American. I pay prices to keep my citizenship, and still love my native land, and care what happens to my family and friends. I appreciate what you say about armchair generaling, and agree that, yes, it is easier for me to say these things. But I say them because I really think they will impact me and those I love, so still have to weigh my words.

Thanks, though, for bringing the ability to see and reach out to those you disagree with!

gzt said:

I think that resigning, in the private sphere, is something of last resort. I think it comes up slightly earlier in the calculus for a public employee. But Kim Davis had options available that would have allowed her to not resign and not issue licenses while also complying with the court. She only had to allow deputies to issue licenses.

Click to expand...

Personally, I wouldn't have run for County Clerk in the first place. It was blatantly obvious by the time she decided to run that same-sex marriage was going to be legalized. If you don't believe in same-sex marriage (which I don't), why would you run for that office when it is the office responsible for issuing marriage licenses. If a couple meets the legal requirement for a marriage license, they are entitled to one. I would not be willing to put myself in that position. If I did make the mistake of running for the office and won, I would have resigned when the ruling was made. I would not want to stay in a position that would force me to compromise my values. She seems to be the type that wants to deal with things as they happen, but that can be a very dangerous way to live, and I don't believe Christ wants us to live away. He wants us to use the brain and the ability to reason that God gave us.

Mrs. Davis had also been working as a deputy clerk for awhile, so it wasn't as though she wasn't aware of what the County Clerk does, and I believe that her mother was the County Clerk before her. I'm just not sure that the $$$ signs wasn't blinding her to the fact that she was probably going to run into the problem of same-sex marriage being legalized during her term as County Clerk!

katherine2001 said:

Personally, I wouldn't have run for County Clerk in the first place. It was blatantly obvious by the time she decided to run that same-sex marriage was going to be legalized.

Click to expand...

I have no idea why people want to say that. Well, yes, I do. It's historical revisionism.

The fact is that it was a 5-4 Supreme Court decision and no one knew which way it would go in advance.

I have seen a report that in her first days of office she started working out contingency plans for what to do if it is legalized. Frankly, I think it would have been good if the legislature had gotten measures in place in advance that would have made a clearer path for licenses to be issued despite the objections of the clerk and without any appearance of the clerk involvement or lack thereof. However lacking that legislation, things were still fairly clear: her refusal to issue licenses was a violation of the first amendment since she is a government official.