Rowan County clerk Kim Davis has returned to work today and said that while she personally will not authorize the licenses, she will not block her deputies from issuing them, something that US district court judge David Bunning had sternly warned her from doing.
Davis, who returned to work on Monday, told a news conference any marriage licenses issued would not carry her name, title or her personal authorization. She added she would take no action against deputy clerks who issue licenses, although she does not believe they have the authority to do so.
Nobody gives a damn what her opinions are and whether she thinks the licenses are valid or not. The main issue was that same-sex couples who sought a license should be able to get one from their county office. Nobody cares which person they deal with over the counter. People just want their business taken care of as quickly as possible. It was never about her though she seemed to think it was. For all anyone cares, Davis can burn incense and chant imprecations in her office, raining down curses on everyone who facilitates such marriages, kind of like a low-budget Westboro Baptist Church.
Late last week she had not made her stance clear and her lawyers had raised the possibility of her defying the judge’s orders to not interfere with the issuing of licenses, and making a stand for Jesus. This had caused the Oath Keepers to send in armed people to ‘protect’ her in case the ‘tyrannical’ judge ordered her to go back in jail for contempt. But the first hint that she was not going to defy the judge came yesterday when her lawyers asked the Oath Keepers to stay away and they agreed.
Now that licenses are being issued to all who qualify, no one will pay attention to Davis and she will thankfully become a footnote to history. The Kentucky legislature, when it reconvenes in January, will likely pass legislation to prevent other egomaniacal county clerks from gumming up the works in future and wasting everyone’s time and money and causing unnecessary anguish to people who simply want their clerks to do their jobs and not make every simple bureaucratic measure a statement of their love for their god.
Thus ends Davis’s grand martyrdom for Jesus, not with a bang but a whimper. It looks like her five days in jail for contempt, while not quite as painful as three days on the cross, was suffering enough for her to make her decide that it was time to throw in the towel.
UPDATE: Here is Davis making a statement outside her office this morning, displaying all the self-righteousness we’ve come to expect from born-again Christians asking people to be tolerant and accommodating of their beliefs while they use those same beliefs to be intolerant and deny the rights of others.
Just how clueless and/or dishonest are her attorneys?
She says she won’t “block them”. That doesn’t mean she won’t punish them.
She may be elected and cannot be fired, but those working as employees can be fired. Will she start putting black marks on their work records and force them out? I wouldn’t put it past her. She has abused her office and authority once already.
I was concerned about that, too, but I assume that any lawyers helping her would have advised her to be very careful with that, because she will be under intense scrutiny from now on. Retaliating against her employees could really hurt her in future elections, not to mention open her up to legal trouble.
Now she can get on with her life and find husband # 5 who won’t dress like a stereotypic hillbilly in front og news cameras.
Follow the money!!!
Liberty Counsel looks a lot like an affinity group scam. According to A. Seidel FFRF lawyer, they spend 11 times in fund raising what they spend on legal work. Mat and Anita Staver were paid by LC, $291,000 in 2013.
How clueless and dishonest Liberty Counsel is, is a judgement call. What is a matter of public record is that it is very profitable for the heads, Mat and Anita Staver.
Gosh, Mano, it doesn’t sound like you’re a big fan of Kim Davis…
Mano Singham: …asking people to be tolerant and accommodating of their beliefs while they use those same beliefs to be intolerant and deny the rights of others.
Yeah, completely lost on her is how tolerant people are being toward her. She can continue to believe that gays are evil, she can continue to teach in church that gays are evil, she can even rant about gays being evil in public on a street corner. What she cannot do is use the powers of the state (through her position as county clerk) to make life harder for other people. Just like no one else is allowed to use the powers of the state to make life harder for her.
doublereed,
Whatever gave you that idea?
I don’t really have anything productive to say that has not already been said. So I will just express my feelings. Kim Davis, rhymes with “bunt.”
#9 -- Don’t do that.
As Miles Vorkosigan says, “the problem with saying ‘death before dishonor’ is it divides everyone into the forsworn and the dead.” When you take a stand like she did, then cave, like she did, you just wind up convincing everyone that your beliefs were not so strong after all.
Self-martyrdom fail.
Meanwhile, the GLBT who have fought this battle for decades, apparently have much stronger beliefs than Davis, who caved in after a few days in a relatively pleasant cell.