Mormon Church Leader Slams Kim Davis: We Shouldn’t Be Having Culture Wars Over Same-Sex Marriage

In a statement that will surely incite evangelical outrage, the head of the Mormon Church has denounced Kim Davis. The Salt Lake Tribune reports:

Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, cannot use her Christian faith as a justification for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gays, a high-ranking Mormon authority said Tuesday. Public officials “are not free to apply personal convictions — religious or other — in place of the defined responsibilities of their public offices,” LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks said in a speech in Sacramento, Calif. “A county clerk’s recent invoking of religious reasons to justify refusal by her office and staff to issue marriage licenses to same-gender couples violates this principle.”

“First, parties with different views on the relationship between church and state should advocate and act with civility,” Oaks said. “We all lose when an atmosphere of anger or hostility or contention prevails. We all lose when we cannot debate public policies without resorting to boycotts, firings and intimidation of our adversaries.” Next, he said, compromise should be the goal. “On the big issues that divide adversaries on these issues, both sides should seek a balance, not a total victory,” Oaks advised. “For example, religionists should not seek a veto over all nondiscrimination laws that offend their religion, and the proponents of nondiscrimination should not seek a veto over all assertions of religious freedom.”

Oaks: “We may have our cultural differences, but we shouldn’t be having ‘culture wars’.”