You know, legally speaking refusing to issue a license to a gay couple goes beyond just refusing to do their jobs. County clerks are agents of the state acting under color of law. When a county clerk refuses on religious ground to issue a marriage license to a gay couple, the state is enforcing a religious doctrine —in other words, establishing religion, which see the First Amendment.

It's hard to imagine the logical leap required to twist that into a freedom argument. That county clerk already has absolute freedom to worship and to practice their religion.

They want the privilege to force their religion on others. Well, our founders were pretty damn clear that should not have that that privilege. They went so far as to explicitly bar that privilege in the very plain text of the first amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights that several colonial leaders demanded in return for ratifying the Constitution.

But ever since, religious forces in the United States have struggled against the prohibition against state-enforced religion.

Hell, the founders even discussed blue laws — which bar doing certain business or sales on Sundays — agreeing in debates about the Bill of Rights that privileging Christianity had to be a non-starter in the new Republic.

How quickly even that plain violation of the first amendment became a fact of life, as Christians insisted, come hell or high water, on forcing their religion on others.

And so it has gone ever since, right up to contemporary times.