MOREHEAD, Ky – Kentucky’s Rowan County clerk Kim Davis is in court today and continues to make headlines as she pushes back against state laws. On June 26, Davis, a born-again Christian, stopped issuing marriage licenses just hours after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of same-sex marriage laws. She has repeatedly said that issuing licenses to same-sex couples violates her “sincerely held” religious beliefs.
![[Photo Credit: J. Stephen Conn, Flickr]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/3059774201_7bc5c8a1e4_o-500x334.jpg)
[Photo Credit: J. Stephen Conn, Flickr]
It is unfortunate that we’ve been compelled to take further action today to ensure that the people of Rowan County can obtain the marriage licenses they’re entitled to receive from their County Clerk’s office. The law is clear and the courts have spoken. The duty of public officials is to enforce the law, not place themselves above it.
Davis’ case has factored into the election scene, becoming a prop in political campaigning. In a recent tweet, Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said, “I stand w/ Kim Davis & Americans of faith under attack by Washington elites who have nothing but disdain for our faith & the Constitution.” Huckabee, who is hoping to become the 2016 presidential candidate for the Republican party, even specifically mentioned the issue in a letter to his supporters.
Priestess Nancie Clark, a Kentucky resident and co-Founder of Spirit of the Earth Church, told The Wild Hunt that the local situation is “very intense.” Clark said, “It’s hard to go anywhere without hearing about [the case] and people are intensely passionate when defending their side of the issue.”
In July, Federal District Court Judge David Bunning ordered Davis to issue the licenses but she refused. In response, she asked both a federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court to remove that order. Both courts denied the request, which puts Davis at risk of being held in contempt, heavily fined and even jailed.
To demonstrate what was happening, Kentucky residents David Moore and David Ermold recorded their attempt to get a marriage license. Over the summer, that video went viral. But, more recently, several members of the local LGBT community directly confronted Davis in her busy clerk’s office. In that video, Davis tells the group, “We are not issuing marriage licenses today.” One of the protesters asks, “Under whose authority are you not issuing marriage licenses?” Davis calmly replies, “Under God’s authority.”
Priestess Clark explained, “Those who support Kim Davis are so strong in their convictions, they truly believe that God is supporting Davis’s decision and that she and others like her must not back down. There are some who truly believe that she is doing God’s work by standing up for her beliefs.The issue of whether are not she needs to do her job as a County Clerk is secondary.”
However, as noted by Columbia law professor Katherine Franke, Davis sincerely held religious beliefs are not “at stake.” In an NPR interview Franke said:
She has absolutely no legal ground to stand on. As a public official, she’s supposed to abide by the law and perform her public duties, which are issuing marriage licenses to qualified couples. Same-sex couples are now qualified to marry in the state of Kentucky, so she is refusing to do her job ..
Of course. Kim Davis has all sorts of religious liberty rights secured under the First Amendment and under other laws. But they are not at stake in this case. All she’s asked to do with couples that come before her is certify that they’ve met the state requirements for marriage. So her religious opposition to same-sex marriage is absolutely irrelevant in this context.
Davis and her eleven deputies are appearing in a court this morning to determine whether they will be held in contempt. Davis’ lawyers argue that she is unable to obey the law due to her conscience and, therefore, cannot not be held in contempt. Lawyers for the state are arguing that Davis is obliged to follow the law regardless of her religious convictions. Judge Bunning told one reporter that Davis is promoting “her own religious convictions at the expense of others” and that if she cannot abide by the rules then “she should resign.”
Kim Davis
Many have asked why Davis hasn’t been fired. The answer is simple. She is an elected official. Therefore, she must either resign, be removed by the legislature or be impeached. As Kentucky law states, “All county officials are susceptible to impeachment for any misdemeanors in office (Ky. Const., sec. 68) … Officials can be disqualified from holding public office or lose their office as a result of their conduct. Public servants are subject to disqualification from office if convicted of abuse of public trust under KRS 522.050.”
Davis, a Democrat, was elected in 2014 defeating Republican candidate John Cox. On Nov.7, 2014, she told a local paper, “I am so humbled and feel so blessed that the people put so much confidence in me … I promise to each and every one that I will be the very best working clerk that I can be and will be a good steward of their tax dollars and follow the statutes of this office to the letter.”
In recent days, the Rowan County attorney Cecil Watkins has come forward to state that Davis is acting alone and does not in any way represent the county In an interview, Watkins also told the Kentucky Trial Court Review that the eleven deputy clerks “would issue lawful marriage licenses. They are simply afraid to do so.” According to Watkins, those clerks were afraid of Davis, their boss.
Now, everyone is waiting for the federal courts decision. Large crowds, estimated to be over 1100 people strong, have gathered in front of the Ashland courthouse and several local stations are live streaming. Before this morning’s hearing, Davis told Fox News, “I’ve weighed the cost and I’m prepared to go to jail, I sure am … This has never been a gay or lesbian issue for me. This is about upholding the word of God.”
Protesters & #KimDavis supporters in front of Ashland courthouse where her contempt hearing is underway #DoYourJob pic.twitter.com/DdIW028Vyu
— ACLU of Kentucky (@ACLUofKY) September 3, 2015
According to reports, protesters from both sides are out in full force with large groups screaming at each other and homeland security close on hand.
Priestess Clark said, “This has been a passionate issue here on both sides. The implication of Kim Davis’s actions are being felt state wide and only serve to further divide us.” She added, “While I am confident that justice will be served for our LGBT community, what happens after this is incident is over? There is much work that needs to be done here and I feel that this incident is just the beginning.”
Priestess Clark and her group have been offering regular healing prayers for the Kentucky community. She said, “What we need to do and probably the most difficult thing to do right now with this issue being so raw, is to extend the olive branch to foster conversations and promote understanding. That is a long road. Right now the energy here is like a boiling tea kettle, everyone is waiting assured that justice will be served in what they feel is the right direction.”
As of publication, the hearing is still in session. The story can be followed via Twitter and local live streaming.
Update 1:26pm: Kim Davis was held in contempt and taken into custody by federal Marshals.
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Let’s hope this women doesn’t actually end up with actual Jail time. The last thing the anti-gay movement needs is a martyr. Let her simply be fined a hefty sum of money and dismiss her. She would be forgotten in no time.
Also, as a European I always found it strange that there are so many ´elected officials ´, it looks like such positions leave maybe a too much leeway for some to abuse the law.
There’s so much nepotism as it is in local gov’t, it’s very much a damned-if-you-do situation.
That is too bad…
She’s in jail right now, until she agrees to issue the certificates or resigns.
You know, I used to have that same worry, but I’ve watched this movement of theirs for a long time now. They’re ALWAYS going to have a martyr because it’s core to their narrative, and because bullies always cast themselves as the true victims.
There is an entire social media and blogosphere propaganda industry in cultural Christianity dedicated solely to the creation and propagation of martyr narratives. They leap on any news item that has the slightest element of a Christian in conflict with the law (or even just public opinion), and they spin it into a vastly over-inflated “Wag the Dog” story that sounds epic. They invariably bear almost no resemblance to reality when fact checked. They stage many of these things purely for propaganda. For a while, they were spinning stories of Christians in the UK and Ireland being hauled off to prison merely for holding Biblical views on marriage. In reality, it was a couple of American culture war pastors who traveled there to create public disturbances. They were briefly detained and questioned by police, but never charged. The last big martyr figure before Davis was a pizzeria owner in Indiana.
Back in April, when the state legislature was fighting over a “religous freedom” bill to legalize anti-LGBT discrimination, the pizza guy (very shrewdly, I think), told a news crew that he would refuse to cater a gay wedding. He didn’t even have a wedding business or clientele, and he would not have been in any legal jeopardy at all had he refused gay business, in that state. Well, there was a mini-uproar on social media, and the spin machine worked this up into a small businessman whose livelihood was destroyed by Pink Nazis. It rallied the culture war conservatives, and in the end, this guy’s “martydom” consisted of raking in $1 million from donors concerned about his plight. He made a million f-ing dollars to stay home for a week and not bake pizza. That was “martyrdom”. I’m not a professional historian, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how real martyrdom worked in Nero’s day.
The long and short is that these stories whip up the religous right’s own masses, but regular people have taken a pretty jaded view on them, as they should. This judge wasn’t unduly or prematurely harsh on her. From what I read, he largely shares her religious convictions, and he had no other real options. Fining would be meaningless, because her culture war backers would have paid, not her. I guarantee they already raised many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on her behalf, or could do so on any given day with an appeal.
I see, well, again I don’t really know who’s the feeling there in the US and A but if you think that the majority of people don’t really care about those so-called´martyrs´ it makes me feel a bit better.
Nah, nobody cares who didn’t already buy into this shit. The people who already do will talk real loud about it, but other than throw some money at her, they won’t do anything they aren’t already doing: making noise and complaining about how other people getting equal rights violates their right to discriminate. It changes nothing, because they always have a couple of “martyrs” going around.
I think the healing needs to begin in the local community and an honest two-way dialog needs to be established between people on both sides of the issue. As long as you’ve got people screaming at each other, nothing is likely to get accomplished.
Nope. When one side wants to deny rights to the other side, genuine dialog is not possible. And screaming at each can indeed accomplish things.
A fact I have only seen in one print news story is that she isn’t the only clerk in the county with the authority to issue marriage licenses. She is the head of the department with numerous clerks empowered to issue marriage licenses under her supervision. If all she was after was a reasonable accommodation for her own religious convictions, as some of her defenders argue, she could either have directed the assistant clerks under her to issue marriage licenses, or told them to follow their own consciences (which wouldn’t be following the law, but it’s something she could have tried.)
Some of the assistant clerks are ready to issue licenses to same sex couples. If they did so, such couples could come to the office and get their licenses without delay. Nobody coming in for a license cares which clerk signs it, they just want to get the thing and be out the door. As long as there are sufficient personnel in the office to sign licenses for every qualified couple who shows up, assigning those duties to the clerks who have no overriding scruples against performing that duty would IMHO be a reasonable informal accommodation, though it is not mandated by law.
This woman apparently has intimidated all the employees she supervises into not issuing licenses either, which shows that her actions are not motivated by a sincere desire to avoid violating her conscience. Rather, it’s a pure power play to prevent any same sex couples from getting married in her county. It’s a stunt.
A follow up newspaper story I read today says that the ACLU, which is suing on the behalf of clients, asked the judge to impose a fine but not a jail sentence. The judge was quoted as saying that if he only fined her, her supporters would raise the money to pay the fine. That is why he jailed her.
I respect people who engage in civil disobedience when the law dictates they do something which violates their conscience. However, part of civil disobedience is being ready to suffer the penalty.
Thanks for the additional information. This woman really is nothing but a bully and it needs to be publicized more widely.
This isn’t a matter for “healing”. With all due respect to Priestess Clark, this is unfortunate habit among Pagans, and particularly clergy. For some reason, we think it’s incumbent on us to bring white light and good intention to every situation without committing to a stand that might step on any toes or invite controversy – like the “all lives matter” response to racism.
This isn’t about “dialogue” or olive branches. It’s about justice. This is not something people are going to come together over and find common ground. There are two utterly irreconcilable world views in opposition here. The dialogue has been had, in every social and legal forum, for 40 years. Conservative Christians have had their say, and they’ve had their day in court. Marriage equality is the law of the land. There are no more appeals, no more time-outs, bluffs or Hail Mary plays. It’s settled. There’s nothing to dialogue about where that’s concerned.
Christians like Davis don’t have to agree with that, they don’t have to like it. They can speak out against it all day long and refuse to marry anyone in their own churches. They are no longer free to use the government to force their theology on a secular society. “Healing”, if it is to come, cannot begin until they accept that reality. If they don’t, life moves on without them. Sometimes we can’t “just all get along.”
Davis deserves exactly what she got, and more. She isn’t someone who refused to go along with a law in the capacity of a private citizen. She is violating her oath of office and abusing the power of her office to actively obstruct justice. She is spitting on the very idea of the rule of law, and she is stealing from taxpayers by not doing a core part of her job for which she is paid. She should be impeached and removed from office, stripped of whatever pension and benefits she may have from the office, and returned to private life.
The Pagan community should be standing firm with our LGBT brothers and sisters.
Yes!
Well she has a choice as to how long that she stays in jail, for it is for as long as she refuses to follow the law.
That would feel nice but it’s probably not legal…sadly.
Yes it is. It’s standard in contempt of court cases, in fact, which is what she’s been jailed for. You stay in jail as long as you continue to not do what the court tells you.
How amazing it will be for some Christians to realize that their beliefs do not put them above the law, and that they cannot use their positions of authority in government to enforce their religious beliefs on others. Now the case begins to get interesting. Now the Republican Attorney General is thinking of acting, and has told her that she must obey the law and this from a conservative Republican, and from a mostly conservative Supreme Court. Liberals would had had a more difficult political time pulling this off.
Really? That’s really interesting. Let’s see how long this pathetic woman will stand being a ´martyr´.
I’m sure Ms. Davis and her supporters think she’s going to be the catalyst for some great civil rights movement (like Rosa Parks), but they fail to see that the train has left the station and most people, probably most Christians even, are OK with equality. You can’t build a great movement by tearing others down.
She’s being backed by the Liberty Lobby. It’s more likely that their organizational motive is to stir outrage among the people already on their mailing list, in hopes of generating a lot of donations. It’s a good living for them. There’s always another outrage to oppose. I remember when the March of Dimes raised money to find a cure for polio, a terrible disease. When an effective polio vaccine was developed, did they shut down? No, they started raising money to cure birth defects.
I think it’s unfortunate that the word “marriage” is still in our law codes at all. If what we were arguing over was who was entitled to have their civil union or domestic partnership registered with the government, people wouldn’t get so het up about it.
Yes they would. What they want is for us not to have equal rights. They would make up some other reason to oppose it if all the laws used another term. They want us to be marginalized, and they will fight tooth and nail to stop us from getting any kind of equal rights, and keep making up religious excuses for why they do it.
Why on earth would you think otherwise?
We would be having the exact same fights regardless of what we called the relationships. These are people who want to be able to discriminate against queer people. They want to stop same-sex couples from adopting children. They support conversion therapy for minors. Some of them undoubtedly want sodomy laws back. It isn’t just about recognizing relationships.
There’s a certain misinformation going around, showing ignorance of the law and how it’s applied. I’m not saying I see that here, but this is my community and I thought I’d be of service and mention it here.
Ms. Davis is not in jail for “breaking” the law. She’s in jail for contempt of court, and the nuance can be important. She refused to apply laws within a regulatory context. That is not a crime per se. Indeed, I’m very surprised that the state didn’t just fire her and let it go to arbitration first.
Outside of the military, insubordination is not a crime. From a certain point of view, that this went to a court case is a waste of time and taxpayers’ money.
The state cannot fire her because she is not a state employee. She is an elected official. Her term began recently. Under Kentucky law the only way she could be removed from office is for the legislature to impeach her. The state legislature is not currently in session.
The Governor has issued a public statement telling her to do her job. He has no power to do anything else other than to call the legislature back into a special session, which I think would be unwarranted unless they have other urgent business.
Finding her in contempt of court and exacting a penalty is the sole legal remedy available. IMHO, it’s also a teaching moment because it illustrates exactly where the boundary of secular law and private conscience lies in this particular case.
Time and money considerations shouldn’t drive this thing at this point. She should be impeached. It is the only proper course of action left in this situation.
As a practical matter, I disagree. Contempt of court charges are tailor made for this kind of situation, and turned things around very quickly. Jailing Ms. Davis put counter pressure on the deputy clerks, and all but one of them are now issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples, and, let’s not forget, to heterosexual couples. Ms. Davis was refusing to grant marriage licenses to anybody. The deputy clerks who wanted to obey the law all along now have coverage from criticism for doing their jobs. The handful of other jurisdictions in various states that are resisting the law now know where that leads, which should deter other counties from joining them.
If the Governor were to call the legislature back, several days would have to pass for the lawmakers to return to the capitol. They would then take their sweet time making speeches to their constituencies. It would drag on, and If they got around to voting, there is no guarantee that they would impeach Ms. Davis. Why would they? What political benefit would they reap? And what would stop the opponents of same sex marriage from starting impeachment proceedings against the governor? Plenty of legislators would be sore at him for cutting short their summer vacations and forcing them to take a vote on a divisive issue.
Rowan County deputy clerks are now issuing marriage licenses to all qualified couples. Excerpts from an Associated Press story:
“William Smith Jr. and James Yates, a couple for nearly a decade, were the first to receive a marriage license Friday morning in Rowan County. Deputy clerk Brian Mason issued the license, congratulating the couple and shaking their hands as he smiled. After they paid the license fee of $35.50, James Yates rushed across the steps of the courthouse to hug his mom as both cried.”
“The licenses were issued only after five of Kim Davis’ deputy clerks
agreed to issue the licenses, the lone holdout from the office being her
son, Nathan Davis. Her office was dark Friday morning as the license
was issued to Yates and Smith, with a sheriff’s deputy standing guard in
front of it.”
“During a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge David Bunning had offered to release Davis if she promised not to interfere with her employees issuing licenses, but she refused, citing her Christian beliefs.”
That last quotation supports my previous contention that Ms. Davis is making a stand on behalf of Christian Dominionism, not freedom of conscience.
My son said, Perhaps this woman needs to be told, next time a license of hers needs to be renewed, that the FSM prohibits me from issuing licenses to civil employees who won’t do the job they were hired to do.