Finally, New York State has legalized same-sex marriage. Now the big concern of NY lawmakers is how to respect the conscientious objection of state employees who consider themselves morally or religiously opposed to same-sex marriage. Under current NY law, such state employees could face criminal charges for refusing to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples. But not to worry. Our state lawmakers are moving quickly to respect these state employees’ conscientious concerns, and even our most liberal lawmakers are on board. Soon our laws will give these state employees the right to keep, but only selectively do, their jobs. Depending on their morals, or their religion, they will get paid to selectively ignore New York law and the will of the majority of New Yorkers. However, no legislators in New York, or any other state, are willing to consider something like this for members of the U.S. armed services who have moral or religious objections to killing the people we want them to kill.

The lesson seems to be that in America we have a right to selectively conscientiously object to other peoples’ sex partners, but we have no right to selectively conscientiously object to killing people our government wants killed. For us, it is wrong to force a volunteer state bureaucrat with moral or religious objections to issue a same-sex marriage certificate; but it is not wrong to make a volunteer soldier with moral or religious objections kill people he didn’t imagine killing when he volunteered. As someone who has lived abroad, I can tell you that it is uniquely American to think that immoral sex is worse than immoral killing.