Jeffrey Shook preached to the crowd outside the federal Courthouse in Ashland during Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis’ contempt of court hearing. Photo by Charles Bertram.
U.S. District Judge David Bunning did the right thing by sending Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis to jail until she agrees to either obey the law and allow her office to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples or she resigns.
Bunning had no choice. His job is to enforce federal law and court orders, and Davis refused to obey. “In this country, we live in a society of laws,” he told her.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of Davis’ beliefs, or those of her colleagues in Whitley and Casey counties. Their interpretation of Christianity considers homosexuality a sin and gay marriage wrong. They have every right to believe that.
But this dilemma should be their problem, not ours. This battle should be playing out in their consciences, not among lawyers and judges, couples seeking marriage licenses and self-serving politicians.
“Jailed. For her beliefs,” tweeted Whitney Westerfield, a state senator from Hopkinsville who is the Republican nominee for attorney general.
No, Senator. Davis was jailed for refusing a federal judge’s order to obey the law. Someone seeking to become state attorney general should know better.
If these clerks, or other government officials or employees, cannot in good conscience obey the law and fulfill the duties of their public-service jobs, they should resign. They owe it to the taxpayers they serve, including the Rowan County couples suing Davis for refusing to issue them marriage licenses.
Davis’ case has attracted national attention in part because she isn’t a very sympathetic figure, even among many Christians. She wants to pick and choose, take parts of the Bible seriously and literally, and ignore other parts.
There is no evidence that Davis, an Apostolic Christian who has been divorced three times, has denied marriage licenses to divorced people and adulterers. The Bible has a lot more to say about them than it does about homosexuals.
A couple of generations ago, divorce was considered a socially unacceptable sin. If divorced people are given a pass now by fundamentalist Christians, why are gay people singled out for righteous discrimination?
If Davis can’t do her job in good conscience, why doesn’t she just resign? Maybe, like so many politicos, she feels entitled to her $80,000-a-year job. Her mother was the Rowan County clerk for nearly four decades. Davis now has her son on the payroll.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but for activists who want laws and the government to reflect their religious beliefs, that isn’t good enough.
They seek “religious freedom” laws such as the one the General Assembly passed in 2013 over Gov. Steve Beshear’s wise veto. The main goal of these laws is to make it easier to discriminate against gay people.
Several Republican candidates have urged Beshear to call a special session of the General Assembly — which typically costs taxpayers about $60,000 a day — to find ways to accommodate the clerks’ religious objections.
But accommodation is a slippery slope. What if a clerk started denying marriage licenses to previously divorced people or accused adulterers? What if a Muslim clerk wouldn’t issue drivers’ licenses to women?
Could Baptist officials refuse to issue state liquor licenses? What if surface-mining permits were blocked by government employees who believed the destruction of God’s creation is immoral? Where does it end?
Kentucky officials have wasted tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on losing legal battles to post the Ten Commandments on public property. Would they be just as agreeable to displaying verses from the Quran? Statues of Hindu gods? An atheist’s monument proclaiming there is no god?
I respect everyone’s right to their beliefs. But I do not respect people who try to force their beliefs on others, especially when they are acting with the power of government in an increasingly diverse, multicultural society.
If there is one thing world history can teach us, it is that mixing church and state causes nothing but trouble. The sooner Kentuckians learn that lesson, the better.