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Attorneys who brought the Ohio lawsuit that led to a Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage want a judge to approve their request for more than $1 million in legal fees and expenses from the state. […] The Cincinnati lawyers represented James Obergefell, who sued Ohio’s health director for refusing to list him as the surviving spouse on his husband’s death certificate. …

Should Christians ever disobey their government? Some say no. But Kim Davis sides with Martin Luther King and thinks civil disobedience is justified. Ms. Davis is the Rowan County Kentucky clerk who spent four days in jail for refusing to put her name on same sex marriage licenses. Claiming to be a new Christian, Ms. Davis is also a long-time Democrat. In court last week, Judge David Bunning told Davis: "The court cannot condone the willful disobedience of its lawfully issued order." He said that "if you give people the opportunity to choose which orders they follow, that's what potentially...

ThereÂ’s much talk of late about Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. She actually stopped issuing all marriage licenses, to avoid the charge of discrimination. SheÂ’s now out of jail, although itÂ’s possible sheÂ’ll be sent back. Among those who are sympathetic to her plight and the religious-liberty implications of the case, many (if not most) still think her decision to refuse to issue licenses was wrong. For example, Russell Moore and Andrew Walker carefully distinguish between private actors (like bakers and florists) and agents of the...

Kim Davis is out of jail, but she never should have been there to begin with. In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court required all states to recognize same-sex marriage, putting Mrs. Davis, head clerk of Rowan County, Ky., in a difficult position. In Kentucky, marriage licenses bear the name and invoke the authority of the head county clerk, making Mrs. Davis, in her view, a participant in a union to which she objects on religious principle. One day after the Court’s ruling, she stopped issuing marriage licenses entirely. A lawsuit followed, charging her with violating the law as interpreted...

Welcome to the exciting new world of the slippery slope. With the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling this Friday legalizing same sex marriage in all 50 states, social liberalism has achieved one of its central goals. A right seemingly unthinkable two decades ago has now been broadly applied to a whole new class of citizens. Following on the rejection of interracial marriage bans in the 20th Century, the Supreme Court decision clearly shows that marriage should be a broadly applicable right—one that forces the government to recognize, as Friday’s decision said, a private couple’s “love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family.” The...

I’ve seen two polls on this and both of them were bad news for Davis. Yesterday Rasmussen asked people if an elected official should be able to a ignore a federal court ruling that he or she disagrees with for religious reasons and got a 26/66 split. I can’t see the crosstabs there but it sounds like they offered that as a binary choice, with no middle-ground option of accommodating Davis’s objection by taking her name off the marriage licenses. Then again, if you follow Huckabee-an logic on this matter, Davis doesn’t need to be accommodated because the Supreme...

Right?

When the ACLU of Colorado likened a baker who won't supply cakes for gay weddings to a police officer who refuses to protect a church or synagogue, it blurred the distinction between private action and state action, which is vital to a free society. Conservatives who defend Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who last week went to jail rather than issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, are making the same mistake. Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said a federal judge's decision to hold Davis in contempt of court amounted to "the...

Imagine waking up to the news that a Quaker county sheriff is denying concealed carry permits to citizens because of his religious objection to violence; or, a Muslim DMV supervisor in Dearborn, Michigan has ordered his staff to refuse to issue driver’s licenses to women out of a religious objection to women behind the wheel. These are among the realities that await should we make Kim Davis, the embattled County Clerk from Rowan County, Kentucky, an archetype for “religious freedom” in America. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson replied to a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in which he...

If, as Rick Warren and others have suggested, religious liberty is becoming the major civil rights issue of our time, will Kim Davis be the Rosa Parks of the movement? Rosa Parks ignited the civil rights crusade against racial discrimination when, on December 1, 1955, she refused to move to the back section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in defiance of a city code stipulating where black people could sit. Will Rowan County Kentucky clerk Kim Davis' refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses because of her biblical beliefs, and subsequent incarceration, make her the rallying point for an energized...

It goes without saying, as many conservative commentators have argued (see here, here, and here), that liberals who wax sanctimoniously about the “rule of law” in condemning Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis for illegally refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, are being laughably inconsistent. The left cheered San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for illegally granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004. They defend “sanctuary cities” that defy federal immigration law and local officials who refuse to comply with federal drug laws. In short, they are demonstrable hypocrites. But, beyond agreement on this collateral point, social and religious conservatives...

PONTIAC, Mich. — A 25-year-old man told police that he was stabbed after finding his wife in bed with her own father, WWJ reports. It happened just after 3:30 a.m. Saturday when the man arrived at his home on West Rundell Avenue to find his wife, completely naked, in bed with her father, police say. The man then reportedly woke his father-in-law up and the two began to fight. Police say the father-in-law, identified by authorities as Henry Allen Michael of Detroit, allegedly stabbed the younger man in his back with a knife. He then fled the scene in the...

Before a judge today ordered her release, Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee announced their plans to meet with Kentucky clerk Kim Davis whose refusal to worship at the First Church of Justice Kennedy and sign her name to same-sex marriage licenses landed her in jail over the Labor Day weekend. Had her stand happened a few short centuries ago, Huckabee and Cruz would likely have been joined by a few notable figures from Christian history — men like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox — the men who first put the “protest” in “Protestant.” They would have understood her...

Overriding Gov. Steve Beshear’s veto by overwhelming margins, the Kentucky house and senate have passed religious-freedom legislation. The Catholic Conference of Kentucky supported the measure. The short law reads: Government shall not substantially burden a person's freedom of religion. The right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief may not be substantially burdened unless the government proves by clear and convincing evidence that it has a compelling governmental interest in infringing the specific act or refusal to act and has used the least restrictive means to further that interest. A "burden"...

More than 30 North Carolina magistrates so far have refused to perform weddings since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in all 50 states. But they’re not likely to suffer the fate of Kim Davis, the Tennessee county clerk who was recently jailed for her refusal. It turns out that taking this position is legal in North Carolina, according to CBN.com. Shortly after the Supreme Court’s June decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that same-sex marriage is a constitutionally guaranteed right, the North Carolina legislature passed a law enabling officials to opt out of performing marriages altogether. The...

A Kentucky clerk who defied orders to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples was released from jail Tuesday, but her lawyer says she will continue to resist until officials find a way to accommodate her religious opposition to gay unions. Kim Davis emerged from the Carter County Detention Center to a swell of cheers from Christian supporters who'd been rallying outside the gates since she was ordered behind bars on Thursday. She later was introduced to the crowd to the song "Eye of the Tiger," raising her hands above her head and weeping on stage with her husband, lawyer and...

In a story that has received national coverage, a Kentucky County Clerk, Kim Davis, was found in contempt of court for her refusal to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple. She was jailed on Thursday. “My conscience will not allow it,” Davis, an Apostolic Christian, said to U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning. “God’s moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.” By way of background: Ms. Davis had been ordered to comply with the law and refused. The judge can’t fire her from her job, so citing her for contempt of court was the only means at...

For quite some time now I have stated that the same arguments that have been used in support of consensual gay marriage can also be used in support of consensual polygamy. With that in mind, I am also one of the few who has argued for some time now (long before Kim Davis appeared on the scene) against the dangers of religious sectarianism (i.e. pre-Cromwell RC times in Europe and also Cromwell using God's authority to close down the theaters, etcetera) and that the citing of scriptures in opposition to gay marriage can lead to or at least open the...

After five days behind bars, county clerk Kim Davis was ordered released from jail Tuesday by the judge who locked her up for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. U.S. District Judge David Bunning lifted the contempt order but directed Davis not to interfere with the granting of licenses by her deputies. The move came down just before Davis was to receive jailhouse visits from presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz. Davis was thrown in jail on Thursday, becoming a hero among religious conservatives for the boldest act of resistance by a public official yet to the...

There is a much bigger picture in Kentucky. Forget that Kim Davis is a Democrat. Forget that she is a Christian. Focus on the issue of government (court) coercion of individual conscience. For the first time in our history, the court will now form your conscience for you or you will be removed from government service. The courts have given us a number of societal changes in recent decades from abortion to gays openly serving in the military. In each of these situations, though, what was changed was society's acceptance of a questionable practice. These things were now not illegal......