Kim Davis, newly modest Christian, has milked her fifteen minutes of fame with a book, “Under God’s Authority: The Kim Davis Story”. Lest you think that Kim has discovered a heretofore unknown talent for writing, let’s note that the actual scribing was done by John Aman and Mat Staver — respectively the creative director and the founder of the ‘Liberty Counsel’. Yet another group dedicated to interfering in the rights of the LGBTQ community under the guise of religious freedom.
And should you, as a fair-minded human being, assume there may be something valuable in Davis’s offering, let the fact that Mike Huckabee wrote the forward dispell that notion.
I haven’t read the book. But I think I can safely say that it likely sands the edges off Davis’s early wanton and exuberantly promiscuous life - replete with marriages, divorces, adultery and causal parenting arrangements - before celebrating her introduction to Jesus in 2011.
And then there is the part which will cause the good bigots’ hearts to flutter. She lays before the congregation the image of homosexuals pounding their fists and flooding her office with harsh language
“Kim chronicles her dramatic encounters with furious, fist-pounding, homosexual men and the hate mail that flooded her office."
So far standard stuff.
But in a promotional video celebrating Davis’s promotion of her superstitions over the law of the land, Kentucky Governor, Matt Bevin, lent his support to Davis’s lawlessness. And in doing so called it an inspiration to the youth of today.
“Against all the scorn, all the enmity, all the vitriol, all the nastiness, she stood firm,” Bevin said. “I think Kim Davis is without question an inspiration, not only to leaders like myself—people in the public arena and those outside the public arena—but to my children, the children of America.”
It’s absurd. Would Bevin celebrate my stand if I were a county clerk and I denied marriage licenses to straight people because my religion thought that opposite sexes marrying were an abomination? No, I would be judged a lunatic — but my actions would have been in substance exactly those of Kim Davis.
Religious freedom means you don’t have to cut your hair, or eat pork, or marry people of the same sex if your religion forbids it. But religious freedom does not entitle you to ignore someone else’s constitutional rights. As it now stands in the US, the right of two adults to marry — no matter what their flavor — shall not be infringed. And if it is your job to issue marriage licenses, then do it. Or get a different job.
And surely the chief executive of a state has a responsibility to uphold the law of the land and not celebrate its breach. Especially as Davis’s behavior put the taxpayers of Kentucky on the hook for $225,000 to reimburse the legal costs of couples who were capriciously denied a license based on some irrelevant nonsense trotted into the public sphere by a sanctimonious wannabe author.
Story: Lexington Herald Leader Bevin quotes courtesy: Right Wing Watch.