“I will not waiver in my belief: that my beliefs matter than the beliefs of others.”

The New Yorker puts a cap on the Kim Davis affair with a simple question-slash-concern for what this whole messy business means going forward:

The controversy in Davis’s county may now end without another confrontation (or incarceration). If the marriages are valid with her deputies’ signature, then that will probably defuse the situation. But the principle is still a troubling one—that religious belief carries with it a shopping-cart approach to citizenship. You can choose some obligations but not others, while the legislators and judges figure out which ones are really mandatory. It’s a recipe for further division in an already polarized society—and the prospects, in Kentucky and elsewhere, are for more conflict, not less.

My personal opinion aside (if you must know, I believe the whole thing could have been easily avoided without legal action, but the fuss did bring out an awful lot of idiocy, generally), the bigger issues do provide room for debate.

Whether you agree or not with Kim Davis in this instance, should people have the right to be excused from performing specific job tasks because of personal belief?

Is that answer the same when they are holding elected office?

In the balance between a personal freedom issue and a separation of church and state issue, which takes priority?