Summary: Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis is not willing to abandon her religious beliefs to that which a government with views different than her own deems legal.
A Kentucky county clerk is continuing to defy orders to give gay couples marriage licenses. The Supreme Court ruled a couple months ago that same-sex couples had the constitutional right to marry in every state. The state of Kentucky does not agree with this ruling.
The Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis is a deeply religious person that finds herself stuck in a tough spot. While her job is a government job that requires her to uphold the law, her religious beliefs don’t follow with the laws anymore.
Davis has continued to refuse to issue the licenses to gay couples, resulting in one couple to ask the judge to find her on contempt and give her monetary penalties, not jail time. Her entire office has now been summoned to court to explain why she should not face fines or jail.
The Supreme Court left the doors open to issues like this happening after their controversial ruling. Those with religious beliefs have been left to fend for themselves as they juggle their religious ideals with the current laws.
A hearing is set for Thursday morning.
Source: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/kim-davis-rowan-staff-ordered-court
Photo: abcnews.go.com
Fire her!
Seems the Constitution says we have free practice of religion. It makes no difference what job you do. The aberrant behavior of homosexuality is not normalized by the constitution. This is what happens when rational people go bad and pride themselves on normalizing such behavior. By accepting homosexuality and trans sexuality and gender by mind as the normal course of behavior rather than the severe biopsychological disorders they are,, the law runs counter to rational thought. She is right. A shining point of sanity in a sea of confusion.
The fight is not with her! She is not personally issuing marriage licenses, that is the responsibility of the county clerk’s office and they are required by law to
issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. That office should be required to
find a way to issue said licenses by next Friday or face daily fines of $1000. In other words, it is not about compelling Ms.Davis in some manner to act against her religious beliefs, it is about compelling the county to abide by the law.
The county then has some options;
1. They can certainly fire Ms. Davis and hire someone who will carry out all the duties of the office.
2. They can hire another individual full-time in addition to Ms. Davis to issue the required licenses and do other work as well,but I do not think that would go over well with the taxpayers.
3. They could investigate having someone else other than Ms. Davis sign
the licenses. However, I do not know if that is viable, i.e. if that is
in fact one of the clerk’s statutory duties, or if no one else in the office is
authorized to do so, if having fully executed documents made up ahead of time
using someone who is so authorized is viable as there may be potential problems should such “live” documents be stolen or “lost” or otherwise used improperly.
At the end of the day the extent to which anyone of us can opt out of our
legitimate job duties based on our religious beliefs is limited, especially
where our job is with a secular governmental office. An employer can try
and accommodate our beliefs but they do not have to. So, when someone
takes a religious stand on an issue oftentimes they have to suffer the
consequences as it is not always possible to have things both ways. If Ms.
Davis was truly committed to her belief she would resign her position.