The New “Conscience Clause”?

Via Pam’s House Blend, we find that many Iowa judges are opting out of performing marriages entirely to avoid having to marry same-sex couples. This has, not surprisingly, called on the Alliance Defense Fund to begin offering legal services to those who still wish to perform only hetero marriages based on their “religious beliefs.” Says ADF:

“Government employees who believe in marriage as the union of one man and one woman should not be penalized for abiding by their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Doug Napier. “This policy allows an employee who does not wish to violate his or her own conscience by issuing a marriage license to a same-sex couple to abstain and allow the transaction to be performed by someone who is willing to do it. Forcing them to participate in offensive acts contrary to their deeply held beliefs in order to remain employed is unconstitutional.”

This comes less than a month after the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, so we were expecting some folks to be up in arms. However, it’s the first case I’ve heard of where the “right to conscience” nonsense that anti-choice pharmacists (and Bush) have been pushing for years has managed to seep into another “issue” of the conservative plight.
At least the judges who opt out of performing all marriages know what the deal is – after all, they are servants of the law and know better. But any judge who shacks up with the ADF to use religion as a means of discriminating who they think should be married needs a serious head (and career) check.