Kim Davis Should Not be a Figurehead for Conscientious Objectors

UPDATE 10/2/2015: The Vatican has distanced itself from Kim Davis, saying that the meeting was set up by an American bishop and not by anyone in Rome, and that the audience Ms. Davis was granted should not be construed as an endorsement of her actions by Pope Francis.

During his recent tour of the United States, Pope Francis met with Kim Davis, the Kentucky County Clerk who was jailed for 5 days for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the U.S. Supreme Court's Obergefell vs. Hodges decision legalized marriage for gay couples at the federal level.

The idea behind this meeting between Kim Davis and Pope Francis seems to be that the Pope wanted to make a statement about conscientious objection. So he rallied behind Kim Davis to make a point about people having a right to object to the duties of their job based on religious and/or moral reasons.

Here's the problem:Kim Davis is not a conscientious objector. Or at the very least, that's not why she went to jail.

First, Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because she said it violated her religious beliefs. Issuing these licenses was part of her job, and she objected and refused to do it.  At this point, Kim Davis was a conscientious objector.

But, other people in her office did not object to issuing those licenses. As their boss, Kim Davis forbade them from issuing marriage licenses for gay couples even after she had gone to jail.

I was a soldier. In the Army, what soldiers cannot do when they are a conscientious objector is interfere with the duties of other soldiers under their command based on a personal belief system.  If a squad leader decides she/he can no longer perform her/his duties because those duties violate personal religious beliefs or moral holdings, that squad leader cannot order the squad to also not perform their duties. You step out of the system because of your objection, you don't force the system to abide by your personal beliefs.

Second, when a soldier develops an ethical dilemma that prevents him or her from doing their duties, they can request a conscientious objector discharge, which is an honorable discharge. Because if you hold a job that violates your moral belief system in some way, you should leave that job. If Kim Davis honestly cannot issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because she has a religious objection, she should resign.  If she wasn't in an elected position, she would've been fired already. You don't get to have a conscientious objection and demand that you keep the job that you're refusing to do.

If Pope Francis wants to make a statement about conscientious objectors, by all means do so. But if he's going to hold someone up as a figurehead for this cause, Kim Davis is the wrong person for the job.