“Kentucky’s Kim Davis Is Out Of Jail, But For How Long?”: Her Defiant Stand Seems Likely To Land Davis Right Back In Jail
At a distance, it’s understandable why U.S. District Judge David Bunning agreed today to release Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis from jail. Bunning locked Davis up last week after she brazenly defied a court order, but in the days since, the clerk’s office has begun honoring the law and issuing marriage licenses to all couples, not just those Davis finds morally acceptable.
With this in mind, the Kentucky clerk, who believes she has “God’s authority” to ignore laws she doesn’t like, walked out of a detention center this afternoon, to the hearty applause of an assembled group of conservative activists. MSNBC’s Emma Margolin reported, however, the next question is how long it might take before Davis is jailed once more.
[Davis’] attorney said that Davis would continue to abide by her conscience, which cannot condone same-sex nuptials, and that all licenses issued since her incarceration were not valid.
The defiant stand seems likely to land Davis right back in jail….
In this morning’s court order, Judge Bunning, a George W. Bush appointee and the son of a former far-right senator, said he is “satisfied that the Rowan County Clerk’s Office is fulfilling its obligation to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples,” consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality. As a result, Bunning lifted the contempt sanction against Davis and she was free to go.
So, problem solved, right? Wrong.
Bunning’s order specifically said that Davis, her religious beliefs notwithstanding, “shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.”
But as the MSNBC report added, Davis’s lawyer, Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, suggested she’s likely to defy this order, too.
“She cannot allow a license authorizing same-sex marriage to go under her authority or name,” Staver said in an interview with NBC News’ Gabe Gutierrez, ahead of Davis’ release. “That’s been her position from the beginning and that will be her position, I assume, on any subsequent occasion. She’s asking for a simple fix, a simple accommodation.”
“We’re back to square one,” he added. “She’s been released. But there has been no resolution.”
In this case, the “simple accommodation” will not include Davis honoring the law, or following court orders, or fulfilling her oath of office, or even finding a job where her responsibilities aren’t in conflict with her religious principles. When Staver says “simple accommodation,” he effectively means “the legal authority to block marriages Davis doesn’t like.”*
If you read MaddowBlog over the weekend, you know that Staver leads a right-wing legal group created by the late Jerry Falwell. Staver has argued, more than once, that Kim Davis is comparable to a Jewish person living under Nazi rule. He wasn’t kidding.
As for the politics of all of this, while we wait for Davis to end up in jail again, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) – two second-tier Republican presidential candidates – went to almost comedic lengths to exploit the Kentucky controversy to advance their own personal ambitions.
* Update: One other possible accommodation that’s come up is removing Davis’ name from licenses issued by this clerk’s office. That said, if Davis interferes with her colleagues fulfilling their official duties, this may prove insufficient.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, September 8, 2015
“Laws For Thee, But Not For Me”: Kentucky’s Kim Davis Jailed, Held In Contempt
Federal judges really don’t like it when people ignore court orders and claim the law doesn’t apply to them.
A federal judge has ordered a Kentucky clerk to jail after she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Kim Davis, a clerk in Rowan County, was found in contempt of court on Thursday morning…. Davis, in tears, said on the stand that she could not comply with the judge’s order. U.S. Marshals later took her into custody.
As she was being led out of the courtroom, the clerk said, “Thank you, judge.”
Davis, if you’re just joining us, is paid by taxpayers to issue marriage licenses, but she refuses to provide licenses to couples she finds morally objectionable, citing “God’s authority.” Davis and her lawyers have filed several appeals, all of which lost.
She could, of course, find some other job – one that doesn’t pit her professional responsibilities against her spiritual beliefs – but she refuses to do so. As we talked about yesterday, Davis feels entitled to keep her job and refuse to do her job at the same time.
U.S. District Judge David Bunning, appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, apparently didn’t find this persuasive.
Just so news consumers are clear, if you hear that Davis was jailed for her opposition to marriage equality, this is incorrect. She was taken into custody because she deliberately, brazenly ignored a court order. Davis was bound, not only to perform her official duties, but also to follow the law. She refused and is now in contempt of court.
Marriage-equality proponents did not ask the judge in the case to take her into custody, but by some measures, Judge Bunning didn’t have much of a choice.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 3, 2015
“The Four-Time Bride Who Won’t Let Gays Get Married”: What Part Of “Separation Of Church And State” Doesn’t She Understand?
If ever there was an argument to make teenagers take citizenship exams before they can get a high-school diploma, it’s the Kentucky clerk who won’t issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and her all too supportive husband. Make that fourth husband.
“They want us to accept their beliefs and their ways. But they won’t accept our beliefs and our ways,” Joe Davis said of gay protesters at the Rowan County Courthouse, The Associated Press reported. “Their beliefs and their ways” is a reference to gay people who are trying to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s June ruling that they have a constitutional right to marry. “Our beliefs and our ways” refers to his wife Kim’s contention that she has the right to ignore the high court in favor of “God’s authority.”
That authority apparently includes godly approval to marry four times in a life so wildly imperfect that U.S. News & World Report could write this paragraph: “She gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband. They were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second.” All is now cool, though. According to her lawyer, Davis converted to Christianity a few years ago and her slate was wiped clean.
Would it be churlish to mention here that Davis has denied a marriage license several times to David Moore and David Ermold, who have been together for 17 years? Also, exactly what part of “separation of church and state” doesn’t she understand?
Davis has been sued for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and the Supreme Court declined Monday to get involved. She can’t be fired because she was elected to her position, but she could be found in contempt of court.
The honorable thing would be to step down, as county clerks have done in states such as Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi. There is a long, long tradition of resignations over conscience issues. But Davis would rather keep her job and exempt herself from whatever she thinks her religion demands, regardless of how that affects the lives of the taxpayers she is supposed to serve.
There is plenty of precedent for exemptions based on faith or personal morality, of course. Conscientious objectors in wartime. Doctors who oppose abortion. And for over a year now, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, certain corporations run by religious families who don’t want to offer insurance coverage for contraception methods they consider tantamount to abortion.
Yet war is a matter of life and death, and for those who believe that life begins at conception, so is abortion. Gay marriage is different. Nobody is at risk of dying, not even a fertilized embryo. Beyond the happy couple, in fact, few—if any—are affected at all.
So it’s hard to see this Kentucky case as anything but religion injected into the public sphere, with intent to discriminate against adults who are pining to make the ultimate commitment to one another. Some of them already have done so informally, for years and years, their unions far more enduring than those Davis cemented with official vows. All they are asking now is to be married in the eyes of society, the law and their God.
Why would people want to deny others rights and happiness in their personal lives, which should be none of their business? Why is it so hard for some people to embrace or at least accept diversity? Human differences — of appearance, temperament, chemistry, biology and all the rest — are clearly part of The Plan, whether the design is God’s or nature’s or not a design at all.
Back in 2009, Gallup found “a strong case that knowing someone who is gay or lesbian fosters more accepting attitudes on many of the issues surrounding gay and lesbian relations today.” In 2013, three-quarters in a Gallup poll said they personally knew a friend, relative or co-worker who was gay or lesbian. This year, 6 in 10 people said gay marriage should be legal. Not surprisingly, that was a record high.
The Davis case is now a headline cause for Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit “litigation, education and policy organization” that offers pro bono legal assistance in cases related to its mission of “advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family.” But the data — and the Supreme Court moves — underscore that Davis, Liberty Counsel and their allies are outliers, bucking social and political trends that are rapidly leaving them behind.
By: Jill Lawrence, The National Memo, September 3, 2015
“Never Mind The Law Of The Land”: Defending The God-Given Liberty Of County Clerks To Ignore Duties They Don’t Like
It’s sometimes easy to forget with all the presidential campaign stuff going on, but there will be gubernatorial elections in two states this November, Kentucky and Louisiana. And while the latter may really amount to a bipartisan celebration that Bobby Jindal’s finally leaving the office he’s become bored with as anything other than a presidential campaign prop, the former bids fare to be a good old-fashioned partisan cliffhanger. In a state that’s been trending pretty sharply Republican, however, Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway remains the betting favorite over Republican nominee Matt Bevin, best known as the Tea Party dude who got crushed by Mitch McConnell in a 2014 Senate primary.
But Bevin seems to think he’s found a big vote-pleaser, per the Louisville Courier-Journal‘s Phillip Bailey:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin said during a national conference call Tuesday he fully supports Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis’ right to refuse gay couples seeking marriage licenses.
“I absolutely support her willingness to stand on her First Amendment rights,” he said. “Without any question I support her.”
The strong defense of Davis’ actions underscores how the GOP nominee hopes to make the fight over gay marriage a centerpiece of the 2015 governor’s race, which polling shows is a tight race between him and Democratic nominee Jack Conway.
Conway’s position is that the Supreme Court decision striking down Kentucky’s same-sex marriage ban is the law of the land, and as such everyone, even public officials, should obey it (snark intended). There’s abundant evidence this is the way the wind’s blowing everywhere, which is why most Republican pols have stopped talking about the issue except when they are trapped in some church basement with members of their party base.
Bevin does, however, have a broader vision: like his junior senator, Rand Paul, he’s talking about getting government out of the marriage business altogether.
There’s the obvious problem with this idea, of course, that it strands the many, many policies Republicans favor that are linked to marital status. But beyond that, isn’t it a little drastic to separate marriage from the state when the issue at hand is the tender consciences of county clerks? I mean, perhaps I don’t understand Kentucky, and maybe county clerks there wield unusual power and possess unusual prestige, like sheriffs in Louisiana or water district councils in California. But if not, it may take Bevin a while to explain to regular Kentuckians that they should no longer be in state-sanctioned marriages because some county clerk wants to get paid to do some but not all of her job.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, September 2, 2015
“Freedom Not To Do Her Job Whenever She Feels Like It”: Kentucky Clerk, Kim Davis, Ignores Court Rulings, Cites ‘God’s Authority’
Kentucky’s Kim Davis ran out of legal options yesterday. The clerk, who opposes marriage equality for religious reasons, has refused to issue marriage licenses to couples she decides are morally objectionable, despite the fact that Davis is paid to issue marriage licenses.
She and her attorney took the matter to court, and a federal district court judge said Davis could either follow the law or get a new job. She took her case to the 6th Circuit, which is pretty conservative, but which nevertheless rejected her case. Last week, Davis appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which turned the case away yesterday.
All of which led to this morning, when Davis decided to ignore the court rulings, the law, and her official responsibilities. MSNBC’s Emma Margolin reported:
A Kentucky clerk is still refusing to issue marriage licenses due to her religious opposition to same-sex nuptials, the Associated Press reported Tuesday, even after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt the final blow to her argument.
On Tuesday morning, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis denied marriage licenses to at least two couples, telling them she was acting “under God’s authority.” She then asked David Moore and David Ermold, a couple who has been rejected by her office four times, to leave.
When the local resident said, “We’re not leaving until we have a license,” Davis responded, “Then you’re going to have a long day.”
The Lexington Herald-Leader reported this morning that the federal judge in the case ordered Davis to “appear in his courtroom Thursday and explain why she should not be held in contempt of court.”
As a rule, judges tend not to like it when citizens ignore the law and deliberately defy court orders. It’s worth noting for context that U.S. District Judge David Bunning, appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, is presiding over the case.
It seems likely that Kim Davis will become a cause celebre in conservative circles, a status that will grow if she’s jailed for contempt. But given every relevant detail, it’s awfully difficult to see her in a sympathetic light.
Davis is paid by the taxpayers of Rowan County to, among other things, issue marriage licenses to couples. But she doesn’t like issuing marriage licenses, at least not to everyone entitled to them.
As Davis sees it, she wants to keep her job, and continue to receive taxpayer-financed paychecks, but she also wants the freedom not to do her job whenever she feels it.
The local clerk could simply find some other line of work – one that doesn’t cause a conflict between her spiritual beliefs and her responsibilities – but Davis doesn’t want that, either. As far as Davis is concerned, she can refuse to do her job and she can refuse to find a different job.
It seems likely the federal judge will explain to her that her posture is untenable.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 1, 2015
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