How did she “do the right thing”?

Discriminating against an entire segment of the population, refusing to do her job which is being supported by tax-payer money, refusing to apply the law equally, defiance of a court order, failure to live up to the duties of her office, and was just being a general hypocrite (protect the sanctity of marriage says the trice divorced).

Nothing she did was “right” by any standard metric of reason. Your beliefs do not make you immune to the consequences of your actions, nor do they give you the right to discriminate against entire sub-sections of the population.

I can say that if she didn’t feel comfortable giving marriage licenses out, that is fine- that is her business.

But she should have just quit her job. Because as an official, she can’t be fired for not doing her job like normal people. She either quits or she is impeached- so that means that it has to go on until it become a big ‘thing’, which likely results in arrests.

It is the legislators’ job to write laws, it is the judges’ job to interpret laws, and it is the clerk’s job just to carry out what the law says. If you are uncomfortable with the law, then you quit the job. You don’t need to add more cooks to the broth.

This is just me speaking as someone that has at least a basic understanding and respect for the major premises of the system that is the foundation of our society. You need to have basic impartiality, and if you can’t have that, then you should just quit. That is the basic ethical question here.

Yes, the moral question too, and that is terrible as well. But that has ‘controversy’, and in contrast I think that we can more easily agree that every dick, tom, and joe deciding they can rewrite the laws when it has been made rather explicitly clear. Beaurocracy is terrible enough without the added confusion.