That Humorous Piece About The Antigay County Clerk Kim Davis
The world must now know about Kim Davis, the Rowan county clerk who is defying the US court’s decision to give gay couples their marriage license. Despite being hauled into court and fined, the self-proclaimed Christian woman remained adamant that she wouldn’t do the court’s bidding.
Davis, who was tearful at times during court appearances, testified that she could not obey the order, and that God’s law trumps the court. “My conscience will not allow it,” she said. “… God’s moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.”
U.S. District Judge David Bunning thereupon remanded her in the custody of federal marshals, saying that fines were not enough to force her to comply with a previous order to provide the paperwork to all couples. Bunning said allowing her to defy the order would create a “ripple effect.”
“Her good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense,” he said. “Oaths mean things.”
Bunning said society relies virtually every day on people complying with court orders and that to allow otherwise would create a slippery slope. The court “cannot condone wilful disobedience,” he said. “If you give people opportunity to choose what orders they follow, that is what potentially causes problems.”
And yesterday, when Davis remained defiant, she was held in contempt and thrown in jail. All this has been causing such uproar on social media and the like, with liberals digging it out with the right-wingers.
And here’s what I actually wanted y’all to read – an absolutely fantastic, incredibly witty (depending on which side you’re on oh) piece penned by Dan Savage on his site, thestranger.com. It is titled ‘And Now I Have Something To Say About Kim Davis’, written in the days before the court battle came to a head yesterday. Check on it.
*
And Now I Have Something To Say About Kim Davis
I’ve pretty much ignored Kim Davis—save the odd tweet—since she first made the news for refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple. Davis is the clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, an elected position, and everyone from the governor of Kentucky to the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered Davis to comply with the post-Obergefell law-of-the-land and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Davis has refused because she’s a Christian, you see, and, as a Christian, she believes same-sex marriage to be sinful and unbiblical. Being forced to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples would violate her religious freedom, Davis insists, and lawyers from the odious rightwing Christian special rights group Liberty Counsel have stepped in to protect Davis from the horror of having to do her fucking job.
So, anyway, yesterday afternoon the Supreme Court ordered Davis to immediately start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This morning Davis refused to comply:
In a raucous scene in this little town, two same-sex couples walked into the Rowan County Courthouse, trailed by television cameras and chanting protesters on both sides of the issue, only to be turned away by the county clerk, Kim Davis. As one couple, David Ermold and David Moore, tried to engage her in an argument, Ms. Davis said several times that her office would not issue any marriage licenses. “Under whose authority?” Mr. Ermold asked. “Under God’s authority,” she replied.
Ms. Davis at first remained in her office with the blinds drawn, while a deputy clerk told Mr. Ermold and Mr. Moore and the other couple, April Miller and Karen Roberts, that no licenses would be issued Tuesday. But the two men began shouting for her to come out and confront them face to face. “Tell her to come out and face the people she’s discriminating against,” Mr. Ermold said. Ms. Davis emerged briefly, and asked them to leave.
Under God’s authority.
Davis and her supporters would like to see the “rule of law” replaced with “the rule of your imaginary friends.” The trouble with that, of course, is that people have very different ideas about who their imaginary friends are and what their imaginary friends think is sick, sinful, or icky. (Their imaginary friends, in fact, might not think much of your imaginary friends.) So empowering people—particularly public servants—to violate the rights of their fellow citizens based on the opinions of their various imaginary friends is an invitation to civic chaos.
I would say I can’t wait for a Muslim county clerk in, say, Dearborn, Michigan (which has a huge Muslim community), to refuse to issue a marriage license to a Christian couple on the grounds that the kafir couple hasn’t been paying jizya... but that’s not going to happen. Religious minorities in this country intuitively understand that to empower religious bigots like Davis is to paint bullseyes on their own backs. So the Jesus-freak goons at the Liberty Counsel work to frame discrimination as a “religious freedom” because they’re confident that American Christians will be the ones doing the discriminating, not suffering from it.
Anyway, I haven’t written much about Kim Davis because I knew how this was going to play out after Davis first made the news: Davis would continue to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, she would disobey multiple court orders, she would take it all the way to the Supreme Court, she would disobey the Supreme Court’s order, she would be charged with contempt, she would possibly wind up in prison and definitely wind up losing her job. Then she would “write” a book about her traumatic experiences—that book is doubtless being ghost-written for her already—and finally she’ll spend the rest of her life on the rightwing speaking circuit playing the persecuted Christian martyr lady. I saw it coming and I didn’t want to help build Davis up—I didn’t want to help cash in—but my efforts to ignore Davis didn’t slow her rise to fame. The events this morning in Rowan County have led the news summary on NPR all day and are currently the top story on the homepage of New York Times.
But no one is stating the obvious: this isn’t about Kim Davis standing up for her supposed principles—proof of that in a moment—it’s about Kim Davis cashing in. There’s a big pile of sweet, sweet bigot money out there waiting for her. If the owners of a pizza parlor could rake in a million dollars just by threatening not to cater the gay wedding no one asked them to cater… just imagine how much of that sweet, sweet bigot money Kim Davis is going to rake in. I’m sure Kim Davis is already imagining it.
And speaking of Kim Davis’ principles…
Davis released this statement shortly after defying the Supreme Court today:
“In addition to my desire to serve the people of Rowan County, I owe my life to Jesus Christ who loves me and gave His life for me…. I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage. To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision. For me it is a decision of obedience. I have no animosity toward anyone and harbor no ill will. To me this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God’s Word.”
Kim Davis has been divorced three times and married four times.
What’s that you say, Jesus H. Christ?
Some Pharisees came to Jesus to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
So… yeah.
The opinions of Kim Davis’s imaginary friends matter very much when you want to get married… but not so much when Kim Davis wants to get married and divorced and married again and divorced again and married for a third time and divorced for a third time and married for a fourth time. (Mozel tov to you, Kim, and here’s hoping the fourth time in the charm.) Davis’s hypocrisy stinks to high holy heaven, as my mother might’ve said, but Davis has an answer for that: She started going back to church four years ago to honor the dying wish of her “godly mother-in-law” (her statement doesn’t indicate which of her four mothers-in-law was the godly one) and that’s when Jesus entered her heart and His magical mystery blood cleansed Davis of her sins—and how dare you bring up Davis’s own marital history when she’s just trying to do the Lord’s work down there in Kentucky interfering with the rights of other couples to create their own marital histories. (And speaking of marital histories: Has anyone gone down to the courthouse to look up Kim Davis’s own divorce records? Because in all fairness… if Davis was divorced for “sexual immorality” then all three of her divorces could’ve been “biblical,” I suppose.)
It’s a pretty neat trick: If I bring up Kim Davis’s four marriages, I’m being rude and mean-spirited and her first three marriages are in the past and she’s saved now and fuck you, gaywad. (That’s the reaction you get on Twitter when you mention Davis’s three divorces and four marriages.) But it’s not rude and mean-spirited for Kim Davis to tell same-sex couples that they’re sick and sinful and going to hell (opinions she’s free to hold) and to further prevent these couples from exercising their civil and secular right to wed (something Davis, as a public servant, is not free to do)—and somehow it’s not dangerous for the goons at Liberty Counsel cram this new and potentially destabilizing definition of “religious freedom” down all of our throats. (A pluralistic, multi-cultural, multi-denominational, multi-faith society where “them’s my religious beliefs!” is grounds for Americans discriminate against each other? That sounds like fun.)
Lordy, lordy.
I say this with sadness, I say this as the son of a preacher, I say this as a former seminarian: This pathetic bullshit is what passes for Christianity in America today. Thanks to the efforts of hate groups like the American Family Association, the Family Research Council (co-founded by a tortured closet case and lately the employer of a kid-diddling serial adulterer), the 700 Club, the Moral Majority, the National Organization for Marriage, the National Association of Evangelicals, etc., and the mousy, near-complicit silence of left-wing and progressive Christians, “Christian” is now synonymous with “anti-gay bigot.”
To be a good American Christian like Kim Davis—or a good Alaskan Christian like Bristol Palin—you don’t have to stay in your first marriage, you don’t have to stop sitting on the dicks of randos who aren’t your husband, you don’t have to deny marriage licenses to straight people who are remarrying or marrying outside the faith or obtaining marriage licenses for Godless secular marriages. Nope. You just have to hate the homos. Hate the homos and you’re right with the God of Tony Perkins and Josh Duggar, hate the homos and you’re good with American Jesus. (Toss in support for capital gains tax cuts and American Jesus loves you even more.) You don’t have to feed the sick, clothe the naked, house the homeless—you don’t have to do any of that shit Jesus actually talked about—you just have to hate the homos hard enough to go to jail for for your beliefs cash in on your bigotry.
UPDATE: Great piece on Kim Davis in the Detroit Free Press by my friend John Corvino…
In asking the court to grant Davis a religious exemption, her attorneys compared her to a conscientious objector being forced to go to war, for example, or an opponent of capital punishment being forced to participate in executions.
But these analogies fall flat. Unlike the conscientious objector, Davis is not being drafted into service against her will. She has chosen a job that requires her to grant licenses in accordance with civil law. She is no longer willing to do that. She should not expect to keep her job, any more than a military commander would keep his job if he became a pacifist, or a surgeon would keep her job if she became a Christian Scientist and refused to perform surgery. Religious liberty does not entitle the bearer to line-item vetoes for essential job functions.
Davis cites her Apostolic Christian faith to support the traditional definition of marriage as one man and one woman. But civil marriage and religious marriage, though historically intertwined, are not the same thing, and Davis’s job is to administer the law, not a sacrament.
UPDATE 2:
Are there no hairdressers in Gilead?
UPDATE 3:
UPDATE 4: God bless US News & World Report:
The Kentucky county clerk facing potentially stiff penalties for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses has been married four times, raising questions of hypocrisy and selective application of the Bible to her life. The marriages are documented in court records obtained by U.S. News, which show that Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis divorced three times, first in 1994, then 2006 and again in 2008. She gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband. They were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second. Davis worked at the clerk’s office at the time of each divorce and has since remarried.
Um… wait: Kim Davis got knocked up by her third husband shortly after divorcing her first husband got knocked up by her third husband before she divorced her first husband and somehow managed to talk her second husband into adopting the kids she had by the man who would eventually become her third husband… and she’s now on her fourth husband? The Hapsburg family tree is less complicated. But, hey, it all sounds perfectly biblical… or it would if we were talking about the Book of Mormon, it was 1890s, Kim Davis was a bearded man, and if Davis hadn’t divorced husbands number one, two, and three before marrying husband number four.
Gotta love this detail:
The leader of the organization providing her legal representation, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, says he’s not sure precisely how many husbands Davis has had, but that it’s not relevant. “I know she was married more than once—I’ve heard three [times],” he says. “It’s a matter of fact that she’s been married multiple times.” Staver says “it’s not really relevant, it’s something that happened in her past” and that her conversion to Christianity about four years ago wiped her slate clean. “It’s something that’s not relevant to the issue at hand.”
So…
Kim Davis gave herself to Jesus and then Jesus sent Kim Davis a big bottle of magic Windex that allowed Kim Davis to wipe her soul clean. Fornication, adultery, divorce, remarriage—all wiped clean away! And we shouldn’t even be talking about Kim Davis’s four marriages and three divorces and who she was fucking and when she was fucking them because Kim has a bottle of the magic Windex and that renders her own sinful conduct irrelevant to the issue at hand—and that issue, again, is those gay sinners over there who want to get married for the first time.
Um, no. Sorry, Mat Staver, but Kim Davis made “biblical” and “sinful” relevant when she refused to do her job because her bible supposedly says this about same-sex couples and her bible says supposedly says that about county clerks.
UPDATE 5: And… scene.
Roy Moore’s Foundation For Moral Law Praises Kim Davis: We Hope Millions Will Follow Her Example
Let’s all follow Kim’s example—we gotta keep those divorce lawyers and paternity-testing services busy.
About author
You might also like
“I Was Sexually Abused Twice.” Bisi Alimi talks about his experience with sexual misconduct
On Saturday, Bisi Alimi revealed on Facebook that he had been sexually abused. Check on his story below. * Since the case of sexual harassment and abuse broke, I have
#HowIResist Campaign 8
I want to say (because I study medicine and I know) that gay people aren’t sick. If they are, they are only in the way ALL humans are sick, flawed
Both SNL and Chris Rock take shots at Jussie Smollett. Twitter reacts
Jussie Smollett took two comedic hits on Saturday night. First Chris Rock went after him at the NAACP Image Awards. Then Saturday Night Live devoted a sketch to how they
34 Comments
Ringlana
September 04, 07:05Haaa this Ugly fat kimis Making Headlines,Divorced 3times? She’s not readingthe hand writing on the wall,she just a cheap lesbian.To save the “divorce issue” Just get a lesbian partner period.Pple needs to wait outside her office and stone her,
Silver Cat
September 04, 07:21I love wit and sarcasm and this article just gave me a month’s dose
Eugene
September 04, 07:54That tweet about their hair. LOL.
Rev; Hot
September 04, 08:07I feel like slapping the woman honestly…. but I’m a gentleman, so I’ll just say this – FUCK OFF BITCH, Your existence Is A waste of useful human and mineral resources…..
seriously, she’s been married Four times??? its either she’s gay OR her husbands were all gay
Williams
September 04, 10:20Lmao Rev.What has mineral resources got to do with anything
kacee
September 04, 08:21she’s a Crazy b**ch, for fucks sake she has been divorced 3 times and she is Quoting the bible. hmm
keredim
September 04, 09:11A GOOD Christian would resign their job, once there is an overwhelming conflict between their Faith and the task at hand.
But The lady is a modern day PRAGMATIC Christian and will be laughing all the way to the bank. I just pray she gives her Tithes on the cash received.
PS @Khalessi, please lets try not to qualify Christians as Opium taking when you rain fire and brimstone on this post. Cheers
Pink Panther
September 04, 09:19Anticipating his signature slur, are you? Lol
Keredim
September 04, 09:29Admin handed him a platter of Gold this morning.
He will go at it like the a released prisoner goes after sex…??
Pink Panther
September 04, 09:33Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaa!!!
Tiercel de Claron
September 04, 09:3115 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians.
“Teacher,”they said,“we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are.17 Tell us then,what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax[ a] to Caesar or not?”18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent,said,“You hypocrites,why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.”They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them,“Whose image is this?.And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s,” they replied.Then he said to them,“So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s,and to God what is God’s.” – Matt 22:15-22,also Mark 12:14-17.
That is Jesus’ opinion and directive right there.
Kim’s job,among other things,which she swore an oath to perform,is to ascertain whether the applicants have met the state requirements to marry and issue them licences accordingly,to so do.
She’s not required to perform the ceremony nor bear any responsibility for the marriage in any way.
Refusing to do her job,barring her deputies to do same in her stead,not resigning from the job while enjoying the benefits derivable therefrom,for job not done,smacks of nothing less than hypocrisy of the highest order.
I’m not even going to touch the mess that is her personal life.
Pink Panther
September 04, 09:35TDC, giving me braingasms since 2015!
Dubem
September 04, 09:40Lol. Clarion, you and the writer of this piece are cut from the same witty cloth.
Tiercel de Claron
September 04, 09:48I’m just so mad at the idiot right now,been fuming since yesterday.
What she and the Liberty idiots are doing/hoped for could’ve set a precedent leading to the collapse of the state,as it is.Thank God the judge,though a Bush appointee,wouldn’t let them.Heck,the man even gave her an out of letting her deputies give out the licences,but she wouldn’t budge.
Were Jesus to come today,these people won’t recognize or acknowledge him,I’m sure.So wrapped up in their own sense of importance and hypocrisy they are.
Tiercel de Claron
September 04, 09:51Come to think of it,as she was being led out of court by marshals,she turned and said “Thank you,Judge”,giving credence to the view she wants to make capital out of this situation.
simba
September 04, 11:21Oh my gosh, she is ugly with ugly hair… abeg resign, plenty fabulous people would wanna take ur position and issue those certificates.. the court has spoken..therefore God has spoken..
Mitch
September 04, 11:32I don’t waste my time on bloated cretins like this one. Reading about yesterday, I felt like bitch-slapping the air-head all the way up the Everest and back! Eediat!
Teflondon
September 04, 12:00She should step down or resign. She has every right to hold on to her religion and beleifs. So I’m not going to blame her for that. But every right thinking person should that it’s best to step down from such situations.
Clearly this woman is seeking attention and knows soon enough should be smiling to the bank.. All in the pretense of doing all of this for God. Whatever her true intentions are, it will surely be revealed one day. Nothing is ever hidden forever under this sun.
I just feel unnecessary attention is being paid to this issue. Can we move on to more important issues already? No earthquakes anywhere? Tsunamis? Hungry African kids all of over the place to be fed?
Pink Panther
September 04, 12:37Hungry African kids? What are you, a Washingtonian?
Keredim
September 04, 13:10Nna, I fear o!! That someone would rather there be natural disasters, death and suffering, than reversible damage such as this, is mind boggling…
Would be interesting to know which God they worship?
Tiercel de Claron
September 04, 14:09Her intentions are already known,Tef.And she’s being called out on it.She wants to milk this situation for as much monetary cum political gain as she can get.
This is a woman who served under her mother,the Clerk she succeeded,for more than two decades and appointed her own son to fill the post she vacated.Of course,the pay is also very good,$80,000 a year,so don’t be expecting her to quit anytime soon.Yet,she won’t do the job she’s being paid for.That makes it a worthwhile story to discuss and contribute to.
As to your prayer for earthquakes and disasters……………..God forbid
Khaleesi
September 04, 12:06@Keredim & Pinky, sorry guys but you know i never pass up on an opportunity to point out the hyoocrisy of religion. Its a simple choice; if the job goes against your conscience, simply resign and look for another job! But she preferred to sit there and enjoy all the perks and benefits of th e job while all the while being an obnoxious hypocrite! The same bible she thumps loudly abhors divorce yet she’s been 3x divorced! This is why this part of the world is the way it is, we simply have too few people who can reason soundly and logically – virtually everyone around here is under the harmful and hypocritic clutches of the opium fumes. I hope by now Linda Ikeji has put this up on her blog, I’d like to see the dimwitted and homophobic comments from Nigerian bigots. The case of Kin Davis should serve as a textbook case for the extreme hypocrisy and intolerance that is nurtured and encouraged to thrive in organised religion. The clear and logical sequence with which this article was laid out gave me shattering brain-gasms
Keredim
September 04, 12:33there it is…. “opium fumes….”
Can you not choose another drug? Indian Hemp, glue, crack-cocaine, Crystal meth…?
Khaleesi
September 04, 12:56@Keredim, religion is the opium of the masses, yea? Meth-crack-heroin-LSD etc, no other drug can replicate the unique high that an opium fix delivers apparently …
Keredim
September 04, 13:13You clearly haven’t had the “Holy Spirit” Try it, it’s more potent than your opium????
Max
September 04, 16:55Khaleesi I luuuuhhhhh you ?????????????????
Chuck
September 04, 14:30It’s interesting that a lot of blowback on this woman has focused on showing that her Christian faith allows her to follow the law.
It should be noted that it doesn’t matter what her religion says. The law does not privilege religious ordinance over its own mandate. If the law says one thing and her religion says another, she must obey the law.
This is especially important since several denominations interpret their Christianity in different ways
Diablo
September 04, 15:08She’s the true definition of a hypocrite as are most Christians who only remember to uphold God’s morals when its time to remind someone else of their sin. This is a woman who has been divorced four times? But that doesn’t matter when homosexuality is involved, apparently. It’s like how the average Nigerian is so quick to remind homosexuals that they’re hell bound while failing to acknowledge that , they that also fornicate are just as guilty .
Like the Bible she keeps quoting admonishes “: If a hand makes one sin, one must cut it off. The truly Christian thing for Ms Davis to do would have been to quit her job.
Max
September 04, 16:49I haven’t seen people who exude hypocrisy like Christians. Theirs is just all shades of messy.
She deserves to stay in jail for a while. Maybe that might reset her chauvinistic bigotic brain.
Keredim
September 04, 17:08Damn Max,
Hyprocrisy is not the exclusive reserve of Christians.
People in general at some point in their life, regardless of their religious beliefs, are hypocrites.
You only need to look in the mirror ?
Tiercel de Claron
September 04, 17:30Bless you,Kere.
Couldn’t have put it better.
Eddie
September 05, 10:45A three-time cheating divorcee…so called born again Christians forget that it’s grace that saved them and so therefore they r not better than the next seemingly hellbound sinner….saddens me that she’s gonna get away with it,saddens me that my stupid bigot country people will support the bitch….just cos some of them hit pussy don’t make ’em better
Nightwing
September 05, 14:20Tsk Tsk, some retards aren’t born, they are made. Its just dumb to use a weapon (the bible) like you’re the only one who knows how. Face it facts boo-boo this isn’t the era where people blindly follow religion. You should probably go check your pussy for virginal warts. Having all those niggis nut inside you. #Hoe
Ramsey
September 07, 12:13Well its really pathetic..