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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKim Davis Is a Gift to Gay Rights
On Friday morning, same-sex couples in Rowan County, Kentucky, finally got the marriage licenses that the Supreme Court ruled must be provided to them. Kim Davis, the county clerk who refused to issue licenses because of her anti-gay beliefs, is in jail, where she will remain until she agrees to issue licenses or resigns. Her defiance delayed marriages in her county by roughly two months. Those months were difficult from the couples who were humiliated and stigmatized by her discrimination. But they were an immense victory for the broader cause of gay rightsin particular, the battle between nondiscrimination and religious liberty.
Ever since nationwide marriage equality began to seem inevitable, cultural conservatives have sought to use hazy claims of religious liberty to fight back against LGBT rights. Bakers in Colorado and Oregon who denied service to same-sex couplesand faced fines for their discriminationmay not have had any real legal argument. But they were appealing figures whose cases pointed toward a concrete goal of conservatives: granting businesses a special right to turn away gay couples.
Kim Davis also presents no real legal argument: She claims shes acting under Gods authority, while her extremist attorneys have filed rambling, impudent briefs that attack the Supreme Courts decision instead of working around it. But unlike the cake warriors, Davis isnt advancing any concrete conservative goal. Anti-gay activists certainly want to protect anti-gay clerks from having to issue licenses to gay couples. But the right generally favors a fix like North Carolinas recently enacted law, which lets religious clerks exempt themselves from granting licensesbut ensures that at least one clerk will always be willing to serve. (Davis, in contrast, barred her staff from processing licenses because her name would appear on them.)
Davis wasnt patient enough to await a legislative solutionor gracious enough to simply resign from the job that she was clearly no longer capable of doing. Instead, she brazenly broke the law and defied a court order that the Supreme Court of the United States itself declined to stay. This flagrant law-breaking alienated Davis would-be allies in the press, from the American Conservatives dyspeptically brilliant Rod Dreher, to the National Reviews gloriously unhinged Charles C.W. Cooke and Kevin D. Williamson. These men have spent years cheering on the Hobby Lobby strategy of respectful, law-based changeand now Davis is blowing all that up. Religious exemption enthusiasts and marriage equality advocates dont share many passions, but respect for Supreme Court precedentand, underlying that, the rule of lawis usually one of them.
Source.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)Her only questionable validity at this time is to sacrifice herself for the cause. And that's already being forgotten
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027142897
mnhtnbb
(31,382 posts)It's the whacko ones that want a theocracy that have pushed, prodded, and encouraged someone like
Davis to become a pawn in their game of trying to convert the country to a fascist theocracy.
I hope it does turn out to blow up or backfire on them. They made a big mistake in choosing to back
an unsympathetic individual like Kim, though, particularly with her history of infidelity and multiple marriages.
It really does show her to be less than loving and more concerned with being judgmental. Makes it
quite easy to view her as a hypocrite and not terribly "Christian".
dembotoz
(16,799 posts)huck a buck is already working that line
the question would be is she a greater use to the cra cra right than she is a boat anchor.
in 6 months is whether what we will consider a footnote will become a profit center for the evangelicals
i would expect a book soon
it will sell well