KIM DAVIS, the clerk in Rowan County, Ky., went to jail last week, and there was no good reason for her to be there. Americans can expect more conflicts over religious conscience and same-sex marriage if we don’t find a way to coexist peacefully. Ms. Davis has become a symbol of what happens when we don’t.

Some on the left say that you must do every aspect of your job, despite your beliefs, or resign. But this has never been the practice in the United States. We have a rich history of accommodating conscientious objectors in a variety of settings, including government employees. Do we really want to say that an otherwise competent employee must quit or go to jail if there is another alternative?

We shouldn’t want that. Indeed, one state — North Carolina — has already shown how to accommodate conscience and ensure that all citizens receive the legal documents, including marriage licenses, for which they are eligible.

The first thing to acknowledge, however, is that Ms. Davis didn’t cause this problem. The Supreme Court did. When the court ruled in June that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, it redefined marriage for the nation, in a way that I and many others do not believe was constitutionally justified. And it redefined Ms. Davis’s job.

Had same-sex marriage come to Kentucky through the Legislature, lawmakers could have simultaneously created religious liberty protections and reasonable accommodations for civil servants. But the Supreme Court decided this issue itself — and, as predicted by the dissenting justices, primed the nation for conflict.

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Source: Ryan T. Anderson, http://www.nytimes.com