Remember Kim Davis? She’s the county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples after the Supreme Court legalized it nationwide in 2015. Recently, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that couples who were discriminated against by Davis can sue her for damages, overturning a lower court ruling. This has revived the national debate over whether a person can refuse to do part of a job if it conflicts with his or her religious beliefs. What far too many people fail to realize is that this very question is moot.

Debating whether or not it’s ethical to force a person to go against their religious beliefs is pointless, in this case, because Ms. Davis is not being forced to do anything against her will. After the Supreme Court ruling, she could have avoided the moral conflict entirely by resigning in protest. That is personal sacrifice. But instead, she chose to remain in her job, still collecting a salary at the expense of taxpayers, but refused to do the work that offended her.

This mindset is not limited to just Kim Davis or bigoted public officials like her. In many parts of the country, pharmacists are still allowed to refuse to dispense any medications that they believe to be immoral. Many women are forced to travel prohibitively long distances to fill legal prescriptions because the only pharmacist on duty at the local drug store decided that those medications are evil.

If your religion prohibited you from handling flour, would you take a job as a baker? Probably not. So why, then, would you take a job as a pharmacist if you knew it would involve dispensing medications that you find objectionable? Make room for someone who is actually willing to do the job -- the entire job. After all, if evangelical Christians can use their religion as an excuse to not dispense contraceptives, what’s to stop a Scientologist from refusing to dispense psychiatric medications, or a Mormon from refusing to dispense anything with caffeine in it? There are a lot of religions in this world but only so many pharmacies in a given area.

Reasonable accommodation for religious beliefs in the workplace is important. However, what people like Davis and these pharmacists are demanding is not reasonable. If you have to wear religious garments, take breaks to do prayers or observe a particular holiday, those are what most people would consider to be reasonable accommodations. Refusing to perform one of your basic job functions because your religion tells you it’s immoral does not qualify as reasonable, because allowing everyone to pick and choose what parts of their jobs they will and won’t do is simply not practical for a variety of reasons. If your job involves work that causes a moral conflict for you, resign and find a new profession that won’t pose such a dilemma. Problem solved, and with no need to ruin anybody’s marriage plans.

I hate to break it to you, but spending a few days in jail for clinging to your bigoted prejudice does not make you the next Nelson Mandela, Ms. Davis. You are not a humanitarian. You are not a freedom fighter. You’re a coward. You’re too afraid to put your own well-being on the line for what you believe in so you expect everyone else to do it for you. You expect taxpayers to subsidize other staff to do what was supposed to be your job because, essentially, you’ve decided that you don’t want to do it anymore. But you still want to keep your job and keep getting paid the same amount.

I wish I had thought of that trick back during my busboy days, particularly this one time when the restaurant manager told me to hop into the dumpster and stomp a pile of garbage onto a hornet’s nest to disperse it. “Sorry,” I could’ve said. “But my religion forbids me from getting stung by swarms of angry wasps, standing in smelly dumpsters or doing any other kind of manual labor for you, whatsoever. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go cash my paycheck.”

Kris Craig lives in College Place, Wash.