Posted on 09/04/2015 6:37:43 PM PDT by markomalley
As a defiant Kentucky clerk sat in jail Friday, choosing indefinite imprisonment over licensing gay marriages, her lawyers approached the microphones outside and compared her to Dr. Martin Luther King.
Around the country, other supporters reached for Biblical heroes, comparing her to Silas and Daniel, imprisoned for their faith and rescued by God.
It’s precisely the narrative gay rights advocates had hoped to avoid. But as Davis’ mug shot rocketed around the Internet, it became clear that the gay rights movement must battle the idea that Christianity is under siege, said Kenneth Upton, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, a law firm specializing in LGBT issues.
“This is what the other side wants,” Upton said, pointing to the image of Davis in handcuffs. “This is a Biblical story, to go to jail for your faith. We don’t want to make her a martyr to the people who are like her, who want to paint themselves as victims.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in June, Davis and a handful of other clerks and judges, advised by the Christian law firm Liberty Counsel, have refused to comply. They stopped issuing marriage licenses to any couple, gay or straight. Davis was merely the first to be challenged in court.
The American Civil Liberties Union, representing couples she turned away, asked that she be fined rather than imprisoned, in part to avoid “a false persecution story,” said Dan Canon, one of the attorneys. But U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning ordered her to jail anyway, reasoning that she would be unmoved by monetary penalties.
“I think he was trying to make an example of Kim Davis, and he may well do so,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which lobbies against gay marriage. “Courage breeds courage, especially when it comes from unlikely places. She may be the example that sparks a firestorm of resistance across this country.”
Chris Hartman, director of Louisville’s Fairness Campaign, dismissed the small number of holdout clerks as a “blip on the radar of civil rights.”
Yet Davis is suddenly famous around the globe as the face of Christian resistance to gay marriage. The crowded field of Republican presidential candidates mostly took her side. Candidate Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, announced he would visit Davis in Kentucky next week, and said “we must end the criminalization of Christianity.”
But Carly Fiorina and Lindsey Graham said she should follow the law or resign. And even some conservative veterans of religious freedom fights worry that Davis makes a bad case for martyrdom.
Her insistence on keeping her elected position while ignoring federal court orders has been sharply criticized in the this week in the National Review and The American Conservative. And Russell Moore and Andrew T. Walker, who serve on the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote Friday that “religious liberty itself will be imperiled” if people “cannot differentiate between the freedom to exercise one’s religion and the responsibility of agents of the state to carry out the law.”
Still, Perkins and others on the religious right promise there are dozens of Kim Davises ready to go to jail in defense of their religious freedoms.
Alabama Probate Judge Nick Williams said he called Davis the night before she was jailed, telling her he admires her resolve, and that he too would rather go to prison than resign or relent. His resolve has yet to be tested: no same-sex couples have sought a license from his office in rural Washington County, home to about 17,000 people.
Still, Williams compared Davis to Daniel, the Old Testament hero who was thrown into a lion’s den for refusing to abandon his faith, but with God’s blessing, emerged unscathed.
“I hate the fact that she went to jail, but maybe, just maybe, this will wake America up,” Williams said.
In Irion County, Texas, population 1,500, clerk Molly Criner also declared through the Liberty Counsel that she would issue no licenses. She said on Friday that no same-sex couples have asked for one. She refused to say whether she would issue them, or opt to go to jail instead.
Liberty Counsel attorney Mat Staver said after meeting with Davis in jail Friday that “she is a prisoner of her conscience.” He quoted the letter King wrote from his Birmingham jail cell in 1963, rallying civil rights activists to challenge unjust laws and pay the consequences if necessary to force peaceful change.
He described Davis as the first American imprisoned for a religious objection to gay marriage.
The lawyers suing her dismissed that notion. “This is the billionth time a person has been jailed for violating a court order,” Canon said.
How long Davis might remain behind bars is unclear. Civil contempt carries no standard sentence. It is often described as handing prisoners the keys to their own jail cells — they can get out as soon as they choose to comply.
But Davis has pledged that she never will.
“She elected to make herself a martyr,” said Columbia Law School Professor Katherine Franke, who has studied the intersection of public service and personal faith. Davis has three choices now, Franke said: She can resign; she can relent and agree to issue licenses; or she can wait in jail until the Legislature meets in January to see if she’s impeached, an unlikely scenario in a deeply conservative state.
“It’s ironic when you think about it, when the basis of being oppressed is that people won’t let you discriminate anymore,” said Upton, the Lambda Legal attorney. “It’s like an Alice in Wonderland world.”
The cognitive dissonance of this statement is striking.
There is no way that Christianity and sodomy can coexist.
...no way that Christianity and sodomy can exist...
Words have meaning and that’s why we need to stop using euphemisms like “Gay Rights” - precision is warranted - “homosexual sodomite activists” is accurate if not wordy.
Words like “oppressed” and “discriminate” have lost their plain meaning for that person. That makes it impossible for her to think straight.
There’s a belief in the secular that all ideas are equal until they are asked to compromise on theirs. Then all bets are off.
This coming from a movement which was started by professional victims and still plays that card (ie, Laramie Project) whenever convenient.
Jail her, fine her to bankruptcy, make an example of the unruly peasants who refuse to bow to their new masters. Stalinesque show trials are standard procedure for Marxist/fascist totalitarians and we can expect no better from the gaystapo. Send her to the gulags for re-education.
Of course you don’t want to make her a martyr - that would interfere with your efforts to destroy her.
I’m surprised the judge didn’t sentence her to immediate execution. I guess that shows how tolerant he is.
Yeah, this is turning out not so good for the movement, eh? Queers evidently didn’t believe Judge would throw her in that briar patch.
I’ve read she teaches Bible School at her local prison, so this is not a freakout like it would be for a true RAT. She can outwait the faggots.
Then why did two queers drive past 20 counties that were closer to Ohio than Rowan County, Kentucky?
Stupid Old Me; here I always thought the ability to discriminate was one of the more important things that made us human beings.
You know; that whole HONORABLE/DISHONORABLE, GOOD/BAD, RIGHTEOUS/EVIL, GOD/SATAN, HEAVEN/HELL, thing.
I am so fortunate to have some SLEAZBAG, QUEER, LAWYER straighten me out on that. Though I am probably to old and senile for his updated information to stick in my pea brain.
Too late.
it’s funny that all those folks and judges and politicians screaming about how ‘the law must be followed’ and how ‘we’re a nation of laws’ ALL IGNORe the FACT that many county clerks BROKE THE LAW by issuing marriage licenses to gays when it was AGAINST THE LAW to do so-
Hopefully her lawyer will bring that FACT up in court, along with the FACT that what this judge did to her amounted to a ‘religious test’ which is ILLEGAL to do to employees-
Bottom lien is that the supreme court had NO right legislating from the bench when they created a new law allowing gay marriage, and there fore Kim was NOT disobeying a legitimate law since it was unlawful for the SC to create this law I n the first place!
This “discrimination” is based on the idea that you cannot have any institutions or separation between the sexes. There is absolutely no way the court could be consistent and not declare separate male and female restrooms unconstitutional based on this ruling. That’s the path we’re on. Completely breaking down any distinction between the genders is a huge goal of the left that defies reality, creates chaos and causes the next generation to be raised with myths and lies instead of truth and facts.
and also, people hate your guts for what you are doing not only to this Lady, but what you are doing to our Christian Rights!!!
Who are YOU to throw rocks at Glass Houses, you live in one and there's a big rock coming right at you, you hypocrite...
Yep. That horse has left the barn.
Yep, just make things up as you go along. This is what the left is doing, blindly throwing away the most basic laws without a second thought.
“who want to paint themselves as victims.” Ain’t that funny. Because that is exactly what the left does all the time. In fact they idolize those who become victims. As far as being concerned that Christianity is under siege, I thought that is exacting what the LGBT folks were striving for. They know darn well that their act would lead to situations like this and they are ecstatic about it. Right on target to remove Christian morals in the society.
Before that supreme court ruling from hell, 100% of Americans had their rights, now 2% of Americans have their rights and 98% of us have lost out rights of free speech and freedom of religious conviction.
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