William Smith Jr. and James Yates have been a couple for ten years. That would be a couple as in they haven't lived with, or had sex with anyone else for a decade. The past few months they've been trying to get a marriage license issued by the clerk of Rowan County, KY.
She is Ms. Kim Davis. According to Wikipedia, she was married to a guy named Dwaine Wallace from 1984 to 1994. Five months after she divorced him she had twins who were fathered by another guy whose name is Tom McIntyre. In 1996 she married Joe Davis. They divorced in 2004. In 2007 she married the father of her kids, but it didn't last. The following year they parted ways and in 2009 she remarried Mr. Davis.
Before she was chucked into the slammer by federal judge, David Bunning for contempt, Kim Davis refused to issue a marriage license to Smith and Yates on five different occasions because she considers their relationship immoral.
Yeah, I know, it has a sort of otherworldly feel to it doesn't it?
According to her supporters and lawyer her prolonged game of marital beach blanket bingo doesn't count any more because she became a born again Christian in 2011. That's right, all her previous sins were forgiven and she now walks the earth with a clean slate. On the other hand, however, if she helps legalize the marriage of what she and others consider two run amok Sodomites, her trip to the altar rail is null and void and eternal damnation awaits.
Bunning, a George W. Bush appointee to the federal bench and the son of a former republican Senator, offered Davis a compromise last week. To stay out of jail, all she had to do was not interfere with her deputies while they issued, Smith, Yates, and others marriage licenses. She refused--so into the tank she went for at least a week.
Since then five of her six deputies have been handing out marriage licenses to all comers who arrive at her office with the money to pay for them. Davis' lawyer, Matthew Staver says, among other things, the licenses are invalid because her signature isn't on them. He has also filed an appeal to get her out of jail and another motion which asks an appellate court to force KY Governor Steve Beshear to allow her to refuse marriage licenses to gay couples on religious grounds.
You read that correctly. As her supporters and a couple of republican presidential candidates scream about judicial over reach, Matt Staver wants a judge to force a sitting governor to allow a county employee to do whatever she wants, no matter what the law of the land says.
Mike Huckabee, who claims to be a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, despite what the polls indicate, immediately jumped on the martyr bandwagon when Davis was sent away. He issued a statement which in part said, "I'm headed to Kentucky on Tuesday to stand with Kim Davis. We must end the criminalization of Christianity." He added, "What a world where Hillary Clinton isn't in jail, but Kim Davis is."
The Huck, a firm supporter of the deeply perverted Duggar clan in Arkansas, wasn't clear about what crimes Hillary Clinton has committed, but hey, at times like these, a person shouldn't get bogged down in details. During the bombast, he also seemed unaware of revised Kentucky Statute 522 020. It reads, "A public servant is guilty of misconduct in the first degree when, with intent to obtain, or confer a benefit, or to injure another person, or to deprive another person of a benefit, knowingly commits an act relating to his office which constitutes an unauthorized exercise of his official functions, or refrains from performing a duty imposed on him by law, or is clearly inherent in the nature of his office, or violates any statute, or lawfully adopted rule, or regulation relating to his office."
Ted Cruz, who has recently been playing Don Trump's bitch, was quick to grab a ride on the crazy train too. As always he blathered on and on nearly endlessly. Amidst all those big brain words tumbling out were these: "Judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong, this isn't America."
Actually it is America, Senator and this isn't the first time. The smarmy little Canadian is either unaware of, or chose to ignore the arrests of Father Phillip Berrigan and Reverend James L. Mengel for protesting the war in Vietnam because, in their eyes, it was un-Christian. Both men did jail time and both, like Kim Davis, as conservatives are so quick to point out, conducted bible study classes for fellow inmates while in the joint. Faith, it would seem, cuts both ways.
Yes, it is a slippery slope. Even a panel on the Fox News show, "Happening Now" recognized it. Host, Gregg Jarrett and guests Sharon Liko and Chip Merlin went off on Davis and her attorney the other day with vitriol normally reserved for liberal democrats. Unlike Cruz and Huckabee, they understand that once you let people start doing whatever the hell they want because of their faith the rule of law quickly disintegrates into anarchy.
Think about it. What would happen if a newly minted President Donald Trump demanded the immediate deportation of every new born baby in the United States whose parents don't have a green card. But, citing their Christianity--you know all that charity to the poor and kindness to everyone stuff--some Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents refuse to do it? One can only imagine the reaction of evangelicals, not to mention the shrill howls of Brothers Huckabee and Cruz.
Despite the myths perpetrated by the Christian right and cranks like Cruz and Huckabee-- Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and a majority of the founding fathers were not Christians in the sense they wish to portray them. And not a one of those flawed, but brilliant revolutionaries would have ever agreed that a single person's religious beliefs should impede, or define the law of the land.
To them, that was what the separation of church and state was all about, not just 239 years ago, but today.
Saying anything else is to deny history, or, as much of the hard right edge loves to do, just making it up.
sic vita est
9-7-15
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