The North Carolina House just put together the votes necessary to override Gov Pat McCrory’s (R) veto of a ‘religious freedom’ bill. The Senate had already done the same. McCrory, as that little R signifies, is a Republican and one who opposes gay marriage. But he reasoned, really beyond any possible reasonable counter-argument, that “no public official who voluntarily swears to support and defend the Constitution and to discharge all duties of their office should be exempt from upholding that oath.”
Despite the controversy surrounding what are now being called ‘religious liberty’ bills, virtually everyone accepts the principle that religious principle or personal scruple should allow certain people not to be compelled to do certain things. No one is saying a minister or priest has to officiate at a same sex wedding. There is always a balance between individual conscience and public rights and privileges. But certainly, it’s not too much to ask that if you really, really, really oppose gay marriage you not hold an office responsible for officiating same-sex weddings. This is so obvious and clear as almost to defy comprehension.
What we have here is the next step in ‘religious liberty’ as a carve-out to general statutes – almost as though you walk around the public square surrounded by an anti-rights bubble which you take with you wherever you go, even if you take into the administration of the government itself.
All this said, the other, perhaps more salient pattern at work here is that, unlike individual state reps, McCrory is probably far more attuned to the implications for the state – i.e., going through an Indiana-like debacle – and for his own personal political ambitions. It’s not that different from the way establishment and electoral Republicans are hoping against hope that the Supreme Court deep-sixes the King v. Burwell case while backbenchers, the base and at least publicly the presidential candidates running in the GOP primaries, are passing the popcorn.
