The spectrum of takes on Kim Davis

Let's dispense off the bat with her unconventional family life and marital record. Let's also acknowledge that those who say that the fact that she holds a public office rather than a private-sector position has to be considered.

What is key, it seems to me, is the hostile vibe she encountered from the couple that sparked her situation. Those guys were undeniably out to set her up.

Now, all that said, are guys like Mark Levin, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz closer to the heart of the matter, or a guy like Rod Dreher, who says her case is not the hill to die on?

The reason for this is certainly contestable, but here it is, in a nutshell.

1. Kim Davis’s position is unwinnable. Nobody seriously expects her to get gay marriage overturned, or even to succeed in carving out a special zone of protection for public officials who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to carry out lawful decisions of the courts. Even if we believe that the Obergefelldecision lacks moral legitimacy, there can be no doubt that as a matter of legal procedure, the Supreme Court’s decision is the law. Our side lost that battle decisively. Kim Davis’s stance, while it may be personally courageous, is going to result in another defeat, because it cannot be otherwise in our system. The only point of backing it is to flip the bird to the state and to the broader culture — something I have great sympathy for, but it’s a pointless gesture that can only hurt us in the battles to come.

2. This is because the cause of religious liberty will become synonymous in the public’s mind with a government official refusing to obey the law because it conflicts with her Christian beliefs. It matters a great deal that Kim Davis is an official of the state. By definition, her role is to execute the laws of the state. Many people, even many conservatives who may well oppose Obergefell, and who care about religious liberty, hold it to be unreasonable to expect state officials to reserve the right to decide which of those laws they will enforce. The political danger here is that when the public hears “religious liberty,” they will think about Kim Davis and her special pleading for a right that, if it existed, would mean anarchy. Angry Christians should consider how they would feel if “religious liberty” meant that a sharia-observant Muslim elected official refused to grant a building permit to a congregation for a new church because it conflicted with his religious beliefs. This is how many people in this post-Christian country — and it is that — see us re: Kim Davis.

3. The day is fast coming when we will have to fight big and important battles that have not yet been decided. When that happens, we will need the support of fair-minded Americans who may disagree with us on gay marriage, but who still, in some way, hold to the unfashionable belief that religious liberty really does matter. If we have wasted our already-diminishing political capital on vain protest gestures like Kim Davis’s stance, we are going to find it much harder to win the legal and political contests to come.

So, if Kim Davis isn’t a hill to die on, what is? It’s a fair question. Broadly speaking, my answer is this: when they start trying to tell us how to run our own religious institutions — churches, schools, hospitals, and the like — and trying to close them or otherwise destroy them for refusing to accept LGBT ideology. This is a bright red line — and it’s a fight in which we might yet win  meaningful victories, given the strong precedents in constitutional jurisprudence.

Here's what I have to say to Dreher:

For starters, you're placing more faith in "the support of fair-minded Americans" and "strong precedents in constitutional jurisprudence" than is warranted in this off-the-rails year of 2015.

No. Rod.

 You've studied history. There were no Muslims or Hindus or Zoroastrians - do you see where I'm going? - present when the Committees of Correspondence were formed, when the Boston Tea Party was organized, when colonial legislatures started to assert themselves, when Thomas Jefferson pondered, one last time, exactly how to word the first few and last few paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. There was a commonly held notion of what or who God was, and what He had created, and it was rooted in the Bible.

Rod Dreher's recommendation is of a piece with the entire message the populace is fed up with getting from the top tiers of influence brokers.

We don't wait for the next assault on freedom and normalcy.

We say "No" right now.