ROWAN COUNTY, KY — Two Republican presidential candidates say Kim Davis should provide licenses for same-sex “marriage” or resign.

Speaking with radio host Hugh Hewitt yesterday, rising GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina was asked about the embattled Kentucky clerk, who has defied a court order requiring her to issue the licenses. .When you are a government employee, I think you take on a different role,” said Fiorina. “When you are a government employee as opposed to say, an employee of another kind of organization, then in essence, you are agreeing to act as an arm of the government.”

“I think that we must protect religious liberties with great passion and be willing to expend a lot of political capital to do so now, because it’s clear religious liberty is under assault in many, many ways,” Fiorina added. “Having said that, when you are a government employee, I think you take on a different role. When you are a government employee as opposed to say, an employee of another kind of organization, then in essence, you are agreeing to act as an arm of the government.”

Fiorina then said that “while I disagree with this court’s decision, their actions are clear. … This woman now needs to make a decision that’s conscious — is she prepared to continue to work for the government, be paid for by the government in which case she needs to execute the government’s will, or does she feel so strongly about this that she wants to sever her employment with the government and go seek employment elsewhere where her religious liberties would be paramount over her duties as as government employee.”

Hewitt asked the same question to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, who is one of the other 16 candidates vying for the GOP nomination. Graham told Hewitt that while he “supports traditional marriage,” Davis must “as a public official, comply with the law or resign.”

“The rule of law is the rule of law,” he added. “We are a rule of law nation.” Graham said that Davis “has accepted a job where she has to apply the law to everyone.”

Davis has become a national figure in what many believe is the next stage of the battle for religious liberty. A born-again Christian, she declined to serve marriage licenses to anyone while she challenged an ACLU lawsuit that claimed she must provide licenses to same-sex couples. The ACLU says that because Davis is a public employee, her religious liberty comes second.

She continued to refuse to provide licenses yesterday morning, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected her appeal for an injunction against a lower court that ruled against her. The ACLU is now asking that she be fined for contempt of court; a judge will hear that case tomorrow at 8 a.m.

Davis’ opponents have seized upon the knowledge that she has been married four times to three different men, and was adulterous in at least one of those relationships. However, all of those relationships took place before Davis had a conversion to born-again Christianity in 2011.

Davis has also been under pressure from her state’s governor, a fellow Democrat. In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to redefine marriage, all clerks in the state were ordered to provide licenses to same-sex couples.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, was asked about Davis’ fight on Monday while on a Kentucky TV program. McConnell declined to comment, saying that the issue was for state officials to decide.

Reprinted with permission from LifeSiteNews.