The Kim Davis News Story (Unfortunately) Goes On

The story of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky county clerk who has been refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, goes on. The latest is, she evidently thinks she can skirt the ruling by a judge that she perform her job and issue the marriage licenses. So marriage licenses being issued by her office are having her name and even the name of the county whited-out; this, in Ms. Davis' view, makes them invalid, so her conscience can be clear because, according to her logic, she is not issuing the licenses.

If Ms. Davis has a conflict between her conscience and the duties of the job she was elected to perform, and which she took an oath to perform, it would seem that the simple answer would be for her to resign her job.

But she won't. Maybe she's enjoying the present situation too much to want to just silently pass from our sight.

I don't doubt that she's enjoying her fame (or notoriety); it seems she's getting more than her 15 minutes' worth of fame. With support from her Liberty Council lawyers, and Mike Huckabee, a presidential candidate, beside her, she can sob into the cameras and microphones and savor her new fame as the new darling of the Religious Right and the poster child for claims of "persecution of Christians." (She claims she and her family have received death threats but I'm at least a little bit skeptical of that.)

Copyright © 2015.

Kentucky County Clerk Refuses to Issue Marriage Licenses to Same-Sex Couples

An ongoing news story says that Kim Davis, the county clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, has been refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, despite the Supreme Court decision that same-sex couples have the right to marry, and other court rulings that she must do so as it is required by her job.

Ms. Davis claims that it is against her religious convictions; that  her religion says that same-sex marriage is wrong, and that she will go to Hell if her signature is affixed to a marriage license for a same-sex couple.

Well, I am not a Biblical scholar (and I suspect Ms. Davis is not, either), but I am extremely skeptical that the Bible, or Jesus, anywhere says that two people of the same gender may not marry. In fact, "Biblical marriage" (as these Religious Right types keep talking about) would require that a widow marry her brother-in-law--at least under certain conditions (Deuteronomy 25:5). Of course it is no news at all that these anti-gay, bible-thumping types pick and choose what in the Bible they care to pay attention to.

Of course Ms. Davis is entitled to believe as she wishes. But if she is unwilling or unable to perform her duties as the courts define them, then I'd say the answer to the problem is really very simple: she should resign her job, but this she refuses to do.

As long as the United States is not a theocracy (that is, we have a secular society rather than one governed by religious law), her religious objections to doing her job should not outweigh the definition of her duties.

Anyway, these are my words to Ms. Davis: You've had your 15 minutes of fame. Now go away.

Copyright (c) 2015