Kim Davis (photo, left) thinks her personal beliefs supersede the law and displace other people’s legal rights.
She’s lost that argument at the ballot box and in the courts (see, e.g., previous story here), and just lost again. A judge has ruled two gay couples can sue her for refusing to issue marriage licenses to them when she was a county clerk. Read story here.
No one abridged her rights. She’s entitled to her religion. But she was never entitled to use the authority of a public office to impose her beliefs on others. That authority isn’t her personal property.
If personally issuing gay marriage licenses offended her sensibilities, she had alternatives. She could delegate that task to a subordinate; there were employees in her office willing to do it. Or, if the duties and responsibilities of the office were incompatible with her beliefs, she could resign.
She refused to do either. What she wanted to do was turn a public office into an instrument of her personal crusade. She defied a court order and was jailed for contempt. She ran for re-election, which isn’t evidence of a conflicted conscience, but rather of a determination to get her way. But voters thought otherwise, and she was removed from the office at the ballot box.
Davis isn’t unique. All across the American landscape, far-right partisans are refusing to follow society’s rules or respect other people’s rights. Many of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn an election their side lost are now answering to the law. She, too, is subject to the law (as we all are), and now it’ll be up to a jury to decide what she owes the gay couples for treading on their civil rights.