our parents were happier than they are. they were penniless. surveys can measure material things. they cannot measure happiness you can keep up to date with all the news on the website. aljazeera.com. after spending the holiday weekend in gaol. rowan county kentucky court walked out of the lock up. a federal judge put her there for refusing to give marriage licences to same sex couples. davis's lawyers are looking for a compromise allowing her office to issue licences and do it without her authorisation. whose rule is law?

it's "inside story". welcome to "inside story", i'm ray suarez. the federal judge who gaoled rowan county clerk offered to release her if she would allow the employees to issue licences with same sex couples to go ahead and do it. she refused, spending six days in gaol. by now, most of the couples brought a suit against davis marry. the u.s. district court judge who sent her to prison ordered davis released today. she walked out of gaol to, a flag-waving rally of supporters, including g.o.p. presidential candidate mike hubbingle by. >> i -- mick huckabee. i want to give god the glory,

you are a strong people. we serve a living god who knows exactly where each and every one of us is at. just keep on pressing. don't let down because he is here. he is worthy. i love you guys, thank you so much. as an elected official. as a public employee, how is kim davis different from a baber or photographer who doesn't want to provide services. how is kim davis's religious base to issue licences different or the same as a state licence pharmacist who will not give plan b contraception. john then bets looks at private conscious and public business. >> kim davis freed from gaol after six days, barely speaking,

but still standing firm. as hundreds cheered her release, she stood by her convictions and promise to continue the fight. >> she loves god, people and her work. three. >> to many, rowan county clerk represents a clause. a flight attendant that doesn't want to serve alcohol or as nurse that doesn't want to take part in abortion procedures. federal law will be fuzzy. companies must accommodate religious workers as long as it's reasonable. >> it can't cause a business to shut down, it has to be a reasonable request on the part of the employee. for example, jewish employees can get the holidays off if christians fill in, or a muslim trucker can avoid hauling alcohol. it can be a slippery slope. and what is reasonable is not always clear. what if people falsely claim

religion to get out of working. federal law leaves it up to employers. and elected officials like kim davis are not protected. officials. states around the country, including kentucky have enacted laws to apply to elected officials and others that restore the religious freedoms. kentucky's law has not been challenged. under-kentucky's law, she'd have to abide by the law. >> davis aside, it's a law protecting those forced to prove. between their relief. joining me, the founder and president of vision america, a groups whose mission is to organise past jurs and promote christian values. >> welcome to the programme, the

people that sue kim davis have gotten their licences. she is out of gaol. are we done here, or is this one skirmish in a longer war. >> this is the first squirmish that's going to be continuing, escalating in my opinion. back in march of this year, myself and matt, who represented kim davis, her attorney, along with a catholic leader by the name of deacon keith, we sat down and discussed what could happen as ramifications should the supreme court decide to literally write law contrary to god's natural law, as well as historical precedence in this country. and mandate same-sex marriage. we were labelled as lunatics, and religious fen attics when we -- fanatics when we predicted this would

happen. we made such predictions, dr james dodds, max and others went on the air and communicated far and wide that we could expect religious liberty to be literally curtailed, if not extinguished by this kind of a ruling. everything we predicted came to pass. this is the first of some strong clashes between religious government. >> some of the supporters have based their backing of her stance in the free exercise clause in the bill of rights. doesn't the free exercise clause have to do with a person's actions and activities, and wouldn't it be more directly applicable if, for instance, she chose to marry or not marry someone, isn't that free exercise? >> well, absolutely not. the whole purpose of the first

amendment to the constitution was to give us a freedom to exercise our religion without any type of governmental interference. what everyone is forgetting is it was five unelected - as the supreme court chief justice roberts said in his scathing dissent. he called them five unelected lawyers. they wrote the law without any historical presence, and they literally redesigned or reframed the playing field. kim davis took a strong stand. the the governor of this state, of kentucky should be ashamed. it should have been the leaders at the highest levels of elected governance that should have said to the court. this is law you have written, it has no boundary or fact in historical precedence. it denies natural law. every time the supreme court history went against natural

law, they suffered the consequences. vivid examples would be the scott decision, the ilunfortunatelyious court of abraham lincoln's day said blacks were three fifth human and could be bought and sold. we know what that led to. abraham lincoln had the courage to say i will not enforce that law, and it resulted in the civil law. as recently as the 1920s, the esteemed jurist said that kerry buck was an imbes il. and gave the state of virgin licence to formally sternize her and 20,000 other women, it was cited by the nazis during the trials as evidence that you can follow the dictates of the government. if they say it's law, you have to obey it, no one gives

credence to that law any longer. it denies natural law, she has a right to say no to it. >> i understand kim davis's opposition and your opposition and what it's based on, but when you take on oath as a county written... >> her oath was taken before the court ri designed the law. her oath was taken before it would require her to deny her beliefs. that's what i'm saying. i'm a preacher of the gospel. i'm not going to do a gay wedding. that's a fact. i love homosexuals, i'll share the goss pills and pay for independence. i will not participate. no matter what it cost me, but for 200 plus years in america. there was no jeopardy. now five unelected lawyers, accountable to no one put every person of conscious in america

at risk of losing their job, thai incarcerated. by the way, we don't put murders and rapists in became without an opportunity to post bond. and in most cases, we have - we treated a known traitor, bergdahl better than a county clerk who stood up on religious grounds. and i think the leadership in this state, every elected official above her should be first. >> thank you for joining us on the programme what does the first amendment to the constitution guarantee. does it leave room for a public official to place a religious convictions ahead of the requirements of the law? whose rule is law. >> the end of aging. >> eternal youth? >> yeah, not eternal "life"...

eternal "youth". >> curing death. >> we're heading from "have and have nots" to a world of "haves" and "super-haves". >> can you afford to live forever? >> what's wrong if rich people got to live longer than poor people? >> that it's no fair. >> "faultlines". >> what do we want? >> al jazeera america's hard-hitting... >> today the will be arrested. >> ground-breaking... >> they're firing canisters of gas at us. >> emmy award-winning, investigative series. >> we have to get out of here.

welcome back to "inside story". i'm ray suarez, if you are a public official, can you put your own reading of god's law ahead of decisions made by the u.s. supreme court. we heard of the reverend suggest you can. whose rules are law.

that's the question we are exploring today. demonstrators showed up in large numbers to applaud and deplau the stand of kentucky clerk kim davis, her refuse to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples landed her in gaol. the first amend the blocks the federal government. but promises free exercise of whatever you profess. that's where kim davis collides with the u.s. supreme court. joining me is the vice president of the religious freedom center at the museum institute and civil rights attorneyy, representing the couples that sued kim davis after she refused to issue them marriage licences. dan, as far as your yints, "clients are concerned, those that have gotten their licences, is this over, are they done? >> this is a good question, they need marriage certificates issued.

there's no guarantee. especially after today, that the citizens of rowan county, that kim davis was elected to represent and preserve are are going to continue to get their marriage licences. i think thaul is unclear. what is perfectly clear is that we'll litigate this case for some time. >> you saw kim davis leave gaol today, jubilant. with a large amount of citizens, the people that put her there in the first place, cheering her on. what do you make of that. she's entitled to her religious beliefs. we never asked for her to be in gaol, and it's not a cause for jubilation when someone is incarcerated. we have no interest in her staying behind bars for any longer than necessary, according

to the court's view of things. the problem that the citizens may be faced with is you have an elected official going back into office. that has a stated purpose of imposing her own religious beliefs not only on her employees, deputy clerks in the office, buts on the entire county that she was elected to serve. that's obviously a dangerous press dent. your prior guest may be surprised to know that there are two religious clauses in the first amendment, one is the establishment. that keeps the government from imposing its -- imposing the religion of an individual, one person adds individuals view on a constituency. that's what ms davis has down cases come before the high court again and again. obviously after 225 years, we are not

totally settled on the same meaning, does this take us into new areas. are there people with a strong belief that their religious rights are trampled upon when other people do something and they allow it to happen. >> it's an old american tradition, to balance the two things, and i think we are going to struggle with it in the future. how do you protect the rights of conscience, at the same time uphold the rule of law. >> this is the great question in american history, we struggled with where to draw the lines, and we work it out. we can work it out too. a lot of the cases have to do ^ fox them and themselves in dialogue. you might say. whether it's a doctor who is asked to perform a medical procedure that they object to. whether it's someone in prison,

whose liberty is constrained by the state but wants to perform certain activities while they are in prison or an american indian that wants to use hall usino gens. it's the person and their exercise, and kim davis is saying it's me carrying out my job, allowing others to do things i object to that is the problem here. >> we have the pharmacist affecting other people when he or she won't give out certain drugs, when they are prescribed. we have those situations that feat the lives of other people. we have conscious objections in the country to combat. it effects a lot of people, if we allow people to opt out of going to war. but we have struggled to find a way to protect conscience where we can. we can't always do it. sometimes claims of conscience affect other people. the issue is can we carve out an exception for them.

can we have snore pharmacist fulfil the prescription without inconveniencing the customer, going across the street to another pharmacy. that takes work, working it out. out. >> before we go to a break, if kim davis said "i detest the marriages, i don't want to let the licences", but i will allow my office to do it because it's the law of kentucky, would you have had this confrontation? >> i think it's clear that we would not have. you know, i'm certain there are a lot of, you know, conscientious objectors. i'm certain there are country clerks in kentucky that may object to marnalts after divorce. it doesn't mean you impose your religious beliefs on your office and county, it's the

critical distrings between what your guests described. and the difference between a pharmacist that worked for a pharmacy. if someone else can take on the duties, then the pharmacy has the duty to accommodate the pharmacist with a religious objection, or in the situation of a muslim flight attendant. if someone else can serve the alcohol, the airline is obligated to provide accommodation if they can't. this is a different thing. it's disturbing to hear this issue framed and couched in terms of religious liberty. what this is is a religious imposition. kim davis, when she carries out her official duties, is the government. she makes rules contrary to the rule of law that we are supposed

to live by in the united states, based on her own religious beliefs and imposes those on the people she was elected to serve, that's a big problem. >> gentlemen, stay with us. where are the limits on freedom of conscience on the job. there's many common activities in 21st century american life that conflicts with the bible and other texts. if you allow something to do

welcome back to "inside story." >> i'm ray suarez. where are the lines. where are the limits. whose rule is law. this time on the programme does conscience make an individual free for all, allowing people in public and private lies to judge desires without limit, as long as they offer a religious justification.

charles and dan are with me. if we follow the object down the line, are we in for, as suggested, a long struggle. >> only if we make it a long struggle. only if people on the extremes dominate the debase. most of us want to see it resolved. we have liberty and quality. we need to make sure both are upheld. county clerks can opt out. the couple in the office doesn't nope they have done it. they have worked out a compromise, common ground protecting religious conscious served. >> the country authorises the letting of the licence. >> absolutely, this is the law of the land. kim davis does not extent to violating the religious rights. if it is the constitution, it can be amended. she's pros civil disobedience. it's the law of the land.

she can't stop that office from operating. can we carve out an accommodation for her. it should have been done before it came up. we wouldn't have had the political theatre or name calling. people are afraid, including legal officials, to say let's work it out. dan cannon, this is not only going on in kentucky, there's large parts of alabama where no one is getting married. this? >> no one was married in rowan countries, there's two counties not issues marriage licences whatsoever. i think that we are at the tip of the iceberg on this. as your guest indicated. it's an unfortunate situation. i take issue with the idea that ms davis is practicing civil

disobedience or is some sort of conscientious objector in the traditional sense. you get into a dangerous situation where you compare her in the media, with a popular comparison with her and rosa parks or her attorneys coming out, comparing her to martin luther king junior. that is problematic, there's a difference defence civil disobedience and imposing beliefs on other people. ms davis swore an oath to serve the citizens and uphold the law. regardless of what the law was, she had to uphold the law. that is not subject to her own personal religious beliefs more than i can say - decide that i think it should be legal for me to engage in human sacrifice, that's what my religion

teaches. >> isn't it right that they say you can't interpret it for themselves. she has no authority to do that. >> no, she doesn't. she's a public officials. it's unusual in the free exercise cases. conscience. i don't agree with the content of her claim. it's a claim of conscience, and must be fan seriously. she doesn't want her name an the marriage certificate. that's the deal. she's the clerk. her name is on there. she wants some process. we need to find a way to get her name off. she can't close the office done, at the same time we have to take seriously that she means what she says in terms of following her god. >> that is adjudicated and fought over now. cannes represented the plaintiffs in the rowan marriage licence case. and charles at the institute.

i'll be back in a moment with a

emanuel kcont, the giant of fill sosify didn't live in the 20th century but gave advice saying live your life as though every act was to become a universal law. in other words don't just follow the rule do unto others as you would have do unto you, go a step further and ask if everyone decided to do what i'm doing.

what if every public servant uses the law and personal conscience as well. you could site the testa mament against marrying a nonbeliever and refuse to issue licences to a mixed faith. a professor in christian judge may site the same testa in the and prf to grant a divorce for any but a few narrowly biblical reasons. you, the citizen could be put in the position of navigate ght the system to interact with the law, but spent time figuring out which member of the staff will follow the law. the best known legal code in christian majority america is the 10 commandment. let's keep in mind breaking a few is actually against the law. i'm ray suarez, that's "inside story".

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