ASHLAND, Ky. — Five of six deputies in the office of a Kentucky county clerk found in contempt of court and held Thursday, Sept. 3, for her refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples say they will process the paperwork starting Friday. (See The New York Times update: “Kim Davis Standing Ground as Gay Couples Get Licenses.”)
![Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis argues with David Moore and David Ermold after the couple was denied a marriage license Sept. 1 at the Rowan County Courthouse in Morehead, Ky. (Courtesy of USA Today via The [Louisville, Ky.] Courier-Journal/Tim Webb)](https://blogs.lcms.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/p-kim-davis-IN.jpg)
But Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, whom U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning has placed in the custody of U.S. marshals said through her lawyers she will not authorize any of her employees to issue licenses in her absence.
“My conscience will not allow it,” Davis said earlier to Bunning. “God’s moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.”
Among her deputies, the holdout was Davis’ son, Nathan Davis. Yet the other deputy clerks had reservations, some based on religion, as Davis has maintained, others with questions about their legal authority to sign off on forms without the elected official’s consent.
Kim Davis’ lawyers also called into question whether any licenses issued in her absence would be legal.
But Bunning said couples will have to decide whether to take that risk on their own. He indicated that he would lift the contempt charge against the defiant county clerk if deputies began issuing marriage licenses but said he was reluctant to release Kim Davis too quickly because of the possibility that she would stop the process and again try to go through the courts in a sort of ping-pong match.
Allowing Kim Davis, who previously has said she is an Apostolic Christian, to defy a court order could create a ripple effect among other county clerks, Bunning said. Two other clerks in the state also had stopped issuing marriage licenses but have not had lawsuits filed against them.
“Her good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense,” said Bunning, who said he also has deeply held religious beliefs. “Oaths mean things.”
Kim Davis, who was tearful at times in her morning appearance before the judge, testified that she could not obey Bunning’s order because God’s law trumps the court.
As word of Kim Davis’ arrest became known in the crowd that numbered more than 100 protesters outside the courthouse, cheers and chants erupted.
“I’m glad the court sent a strong message that you have to follow the law,” said Timothy Love of Kentucky, one of the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage.
Those supporting the Rowan County clerk decried the decision, with one man falling on the courthouse steps to pray.
“It’s very unjust,” said the Rev. Randy Smith of Morehead, Ky., where Kim Davis’ office is located. “Religious liberty has been trampled on today.”
Lawyers inside the courtroom with the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which is representing Davis, argued that she met a legal test for protection under federal law because her convictions created a “factual inability” to issue licenses to same-sex couples.
But lawyers for the couples repeatedly pressed the county clerk to admit that her policy is the result of a personal choice.
Bunning agreed and said fines for Davis, who makes $80,000 a year, would not be enough to ensure that she would follow his orders. He also raised concerns that supporters, whom she said are raising money for her, would pay any fine he levied, hampering its force.
“I don’t do this lightly,” he said. “It’s necessary in this case.”
Chris Hartman, head of the Fairness Campaign advocacy group, said he thought the judge would levy fines but hoped that jailing Kim Davis would act as a strong deterrent for others who might refuse to follow the law.
Some thought the move could turn her into a martyr among gay-marriage opponents.
Though the clerk was tearful as she testified how she became a Christian in 2011 following the death of her mother-in-law, she appeared straight faced as marshals led her out of the courtroom.
Outside, each side continued to clash.
Ashley Hogue, a secretary from Ashland, held a sign outside the courthouse that read, “Kim Davis does not speak for my religious beliefs.”
“This is so ugly,” she said, wiping away tears. “I was unprepared for all the hate.”
Demonstrator Charles Ramey, a retired steelworker, downplayed the vitrol.
“We don’t hate these people,” he said. “We wouldn’t tell them how to get saved if we hated them.”
Davis has been resisting suggestions that her deputies issue the licenses because her name appears on the certificates. But the crux of the contempt case against her involves Kentucky law, which, unlike some states’ laws, requires county clerks to issue marriage licenses.
When four couples — two gay and two straight — filed suit against her for refusing to issue marriage licenses after the June Supreme Court ruling, she argued that they could be served in other Kentucky counties. Bunning, son of GOP Sen. Jim Bunning who retired from the U.S. Senate in 2011, told her that she or her deputies must issue the licenses but stayed his order until this past Monday as she filed an appeal with the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
When that stay expired, appeals court judges declined to renew it. And when she asked the Supreme Court to weigh in Monday, justices in Washington refused.
“I hope that everyone will remain civil,” Bunning said. “This country has always had disagreements, but what makes this country different from other countries is that we respect the rule of law.”
— Mike Wynn and Chris Kenning (Wynn and Kenning report for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky. Contributing: The Associated Press)
© 2015 USA Today Network. Used with permission.
Posted Sept. 4, 2015
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Kim Davis is in contempt of court. Her job requires that she follow the laws of the land and as of now, the law of the land recognizes same sex couples legal right to marry. If her conscience prohibits from signing their marriage license, then she should resign her job and let someone else do it. This is a woman who has been married four times and committed adultery with the man who is now her husband while she was married to her third husband. I understand that was before she became a born-again Christian, but I can’t help but question her sincerity here. Her lawyers have their own agenda, which doesn’t include her spiritual welfare. We believe in separation of Church and State. Freedom OF religion and Freedom FROM religion are some of the reasons our early ancestors left Europe to settle in the United States. How would Kim Davis and her lawyers feel if a Muslim took over her job and subsequently insisted that all prospective wives wear a hijab? Sound far-fetched? Not so much if we allow everyone to decide which laws they choose to obey based on their flavor of the month religion. She’s giving all of us Christians a bad name.
It would be easy to cite Ms. Davis’s adultery as some from of hypocrisy, but I think that would be wrong. whatever sins she committed or continues to commit are laid on Christ. Further, I will leave off wondering if she ever issued a marriage license to someone going through the same sorts of infidelities simply because the couple was heterosexual and the state can grant such marriages without offending most Christians. In other words, we are selective in how we take offense. But, that too, is laid, by us on Christ.
Quite simply, same sex couples are not married, no matter what the state says because marriage cannot be entered into by a same sex couple, no matter what they call it. It is simply world approval of sin. That’s nothing new and no Christian should be party to approving such sin.
The issue I have and that any Christian ought to have is whether a Christian can participate at all levels of government. Certainly, we have the freedom and it is right and proper to serve but, if that service demands that we turn a blind eye to doctrine in the keeping of the law according to our governmental position, as in issuing a marriage license to all persons legally entitled to a marriage license, what do we do? Is the signature, even if we don’t believe that the couple is married, promoting this same-sex couple doing something they would not already be doing? Are we stopping the sin if the sin is committed in their hearts? Were they chaste prior to marriage and are we saying “go for it”? The same for a heterosexual couple. Do we examine the fitness beyond the letter of the secular law of the ones before us, asking for a license? Shouldn’t we, if we are earnest in our desire to fulfill God’s Law and refrain from publicly condoning sin?
I would say that, if a Christian clerk would have no cause to search a man and a woman to see if they divorced for proper, scriptural cause, or that there were not children born to others that these people ought to be married to, then that clerk has no reason not to sign a license for anyone else that is deemed fit to marry, legally.
On the contrary, Ms. Schiewe, Ms Davis should be applauded for standing up for her beliefs. The American public has been mightily misinformed about the “separation of church and state” issue. No where in the Constitution or Bill of Rights does it mandate this so-called “separation”. We have been hoodwinked by another poor decision but a Supreme Court judge, Justice Hugo Black; an ex-kkk member who hated Catholics. He took a private letter of Thomas Jefferson’s addressed to the Danbury Baptists, and used it in a ruling against the Catholic Church. It has since been used by secularist, atheist judges and others to try and limit and control the public expression of religion. The First Amendment gives us freedom OF religion, not FROM religion. As to allowing everyone to decide which laws they choose to obey, there have been several cases of laws not being followed without repercussions. Why did the DOJ not follow the law with regard to DOMA? Why does Colorado allow recreational use of marijuana when it is clearly illegal according to federal law ? The difference between those cases and Ms.Davis is that those other cases were not challenged by the courts or a judge. This is not about justice or equality, but about the government using it’s power to make an example of Ms. Davis. She is being held without bail, even criminals are allowed bail. The judge could’ve made a religious accommodation for Ms. Davis, or the gay couple could’ve gone to another office if they really wanted to marry. And does it really matter that Ms. Davis’ life is full of problems and mis-steps, like all of us ? Are we not all sinners “saved by grace?”