Kim Davis, bigotry crusader, was shot down again in the U.S. Supreme on Monday, October 5, 2020 (read story here), with some whining by two homophobic justices, after having been shot down by voters in the 2018 election (read about that here) after switching parties because the Democrats aren’t bigoted enough for her taste (read about that here).
Davis is the Kentucky ex-county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, asserting the Supreme Court decision giving them equality under the law violated her religious freedom. But Davis held a secular public office, not a church position, and was required to comply with the Supreme Court ruling and state laws governing issuance of marriage licenses.
Davis contended the duties of her office conflicted with her religious beliefs. That’s true, they did, which caused all the problems that followed. But no one asked her to give up her religious beliefs. Faced with such a dilemma, an eminently feasible solution was to give up the public office.
The fact is, Davis wanted to keep that office and use it as a cudgel to discriminate against gay people. People like her don’t like gay people because they’re narrow-minded bigots. They falsely believe homosexuality is a behavior people choose. It’s a biological condition people are born with. Scientists who study animal behavior will tell you it’s not unique to homo sapiens; it occurs in other species, too.
Getting back to Kim Davis and the bigotry brigade, “In defending herself in court, Davis argued that as a government employee, she was immune from lawsuits involving her official duties,” NBC News said. That’s absurd. If courts couldn’t compel government officials to comply with the law, we’d become a lawless society and victims of the whims of petty bureaucrats. Imagine if you could be denied a driver’s license, business license, birth certificate, or death certificate just because some public official doesn’t like your religion, skin color, eye color, or because you didn’t pay a big enough bribe. You might not be able to die.
As I wrote here, this case was never about religious freedom. We have religious freedom in this country, which isn’t diminished a whit by gays getting married. The First Amendment was never meant to be a license to make other people dance to the tune of your religion.
Davis could have resolved her personal objections to issuing marriage licenses to gay couples by delegating that task to staffers willing to do it. Her refusal to do that, and the fact her supporters wanted those staffers fired, exposed that argument as a lie. She and her supporters wanted to impose their religious beliefs on others. It’s that simple. Letting them get away with this would infringe on other people’s freedom.
This was always about discriminating against gays, not preventing government from intruding into their private religious lives. They can believe anything they want, attend any church they choose, engage in any religious practice they like (with some exceptions, e.g. human sacrifice), whenever and wherever they want, except when carrying out official government duties, because in America the First Amendment requires government to be religion-neutral in order to protect everyone’s religious rights. The only think Kim Davis and her ilk have been deprived of is power to interfere in other people’s lives, a power that didn’t belong to them in the first place.
Two Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, seem not to get that. Still bent out of shape about the Supreme Court decision that recognized gays have the same civil rights as everyone else, including the right to marry, they wrote that “making same-sex marriage the law of the land amounted to a ‘cavalier treatment of religion.'” That’s baloney. Explain to me how two gays getting married in Vermont keeps people in Kentucky or Kansas from going to the church of their choice or prevents them from practicing their religion. I’m not gay, so gay marriage doesn’t affect me at all, and unless they’re gay, it doesn’t affect them either. This is all about some people being offended merely because other people different from them happen to exist.
Get off your high horses, bigots. This world isn’t just yours. You have to share it with its other inhabitants. This country belongs equally to all of us. We all have a right to live in our native land unmolested by our neighbors. You have a right to be bigots. But you don’t have a right to tell other people how to live.
Actually gay people were always able to get married. In fact many did get married to spouses of the opposite sex. Many still do. There was a trend toward states actually passing legislation on whether people of the same sex could get married. It was happening, but it was going to be a slow change, and some states were not likely to go along creating issues similar to abortion where some states had legalized it, and others had not.
Since the state of Kentucky had not passed legislation Kim Davis actions may not be so extreme. Short of legislative action there is no way to know if gay marriage will remain in Kentucky or other states.
While Utah maybe a little wishy washy no other states county clerk is going to issue anyone a marriage license to marry a second, third or fourth person at the same time. Some religions do allow polygamy. Some do not. There are other reasons that a county clerk can deny a marriage license in every state. County clerks are given that power by state statutes. There were always issues in not allowing people of different races to marry. The flaw was it nearly always was a prohibition of black and whites marrying, with no prohibitions of interracial marriages of other groups. That made it a clear violation of the 14th amendment.
Due to history religion and marriage generally went hand in hand. In these United States we brought about separation of church and state, yet the laws about marriage were often those of a particular religion in particular colonies that became states. I suppose we could have done away with the practice entirely, and certain groups have certainly discussed doing that or practiced non marriage between themselves. Socialists, revolutionaries, and communists have certainly had different ideas about marriage or doing away with the practice.
One could argue that civil marriage could be outlawed and only those with religious beliefs and belonging to a particular religion can get married. Perhaps it is all a needed discussion that we should have. Mayb marriage contracts should expire after 10 or 18 years. Maybe these conservative judges are really wild eyed libertines who would have legislatures and society do a real discussion and perhaps free ourselves of the oppression of marriage. Of course the Supreme court or any court cannot do that in this the land of free people.
I’d sure like to see what your ex-wife has to say about this.