Judge jails defiant Kentucky clerk; deputies say they would issue marriage licenses
Published 4:45 pm Thursday, September 3, 2015
- National media, supporters, and protesters of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis arrive at the federal courthouse in Ashland, Ky. where Davis's latest hearing on her refusal to issue any marriage licences was held.
ASHLAND, Ky. — A federal judge Thursday ordered Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis jailed for both refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples and barring her deputies from doing so.
But five of the six deputies said they would obey the court order to issue marriage licenses to avoid paying fines or going to jail. Only her son, Nathan, declined.
Lawyers for Davis questioned whether couples issued licenses in Davis’ absence would be legally married under Kentucky law. U.S. Judge David Bunning said couples would have to weigh that risk on their own.
The clerk’s office in the county seat of Morehead is expected to start issuing licenses Friday for the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court authorized gay marriage nationwide in June.
Davis could have avoided jail if she had agreed to lift her order banning her deputies from issuing marriage licenses even though she did not personally have to do so.
Bunning said his order supersedes Davis’ ban. He also said it applies to two other Kentucky counties – Whitley and Casey – where clerks have refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
The judge said fines were not enough to force Davis to comply with the court order and that allowing her to continue to defy the law would send a wrong signal to others who might feel free do likewise.
Davis contends she would disobey “God’s authority” by issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, and that “God’s law” trumps civil law.
“My conscience will not allow it,” a tearful Davis said. “God’s moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.”
Bunning, son of former U.S. Senator and Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning, said Davis’ “good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense. Oaths mean things,” referring to the oath of office taken by public officials to uphold the law.
He said Davis would remain jailed to avoid the controversy turning into a “ping-pong” match between her office and the courts on the issue.
A crowd of more than 100 protesters for and against Davis’ position gathered outside the federal courthouse in Ashland, Kentucky, Thursday to await the ruling.
Shouts of “Love Won!” from gay marriage advocates mixed with “Stand Firm” from Davis’ supporters, underscoring the divide that has captured national attention in this rural corner of northeast Kentucky.
Davis, who turns 50 in two weeks, repeated her strong religious objections at the court hearing to same-sex marriage during emotional testimony.
“You can’t be separated from something that’s in your heart and in your soul,” she said. “I promised to love Him with all my heart, mind and soul because I want to make heaven my home.”
Davis didn’t practice religion until four years ago when she was 45 years old and the product of a past she was not proud of.
She said she found God when her mother-in-law, as a “dying wish,” asked her to attend the Solid Rock Apostolic Church of her husband’s family in northeast Kentucky’s Rowan County.
It was there, she says, that she found salvation from her previous life of multiple marriages and twins fathered by her current husband while she was married to her first husband.
“I am not perfect. No one is,” Davis has stated. “But I am forgiven and I love my Lord and must be obedient to Him and to the Word of God.”
That’s why, she says, as Rowan County Clerk she refused to comply with the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage.
Davis and the two other Kentucky county clerks who won’t issue marriage licenses to gay couples hold office in sparsely populated rural areas where conservative ideology and independent evangelical religions dominate.
But Davis has become the lighting rod as the only Kentucky clerk sued for her stand on religious grounds. She insists it is not a sexual preference issue but rather her First Amendment right of religious liberty to defy the law.
Critics of Davis’ fundamentalist position against gay marriage point to her past as an indication of religious hypocrisy. They also accuse her of selectively applying the Bible.
Davis has been divorced three times and married four times, county records show.
She married her first husband, Dwain Wallace, when she was 18, and divorced him in 1994. Five months later, she gave birth to twin boys.
The father of the twins was identified in the county records as Joe Davis, the groom of her second and fourth marriages. They married the first time in 1996, divorced in 2006, and then remarried in 2009.
In between, she married Thomas McIntyre in 2007. That union ended in divorce less than a year later.
Davis and her current husband, Joe Davis, live on a 134-acre farm outside of Morehead, Kentucky, which is the home of Morehead State University.
Joe Davis describes himself as “an old redneck hillbilly.” He attended the Solid Rock Apostolic Church with his mother. She urged his wife to also attend the church and Kim Davis says she did so to fulfill her mother-in-law’s dying wish.
Mat Staver, whose Orlando, Florida, law firm Liberty Counsel is defending Davis, said her past doesn’t matter because she “wiped the slate clean” when she found God.
“That life she led before is not the life she lives now,” said Staver. “She asked for and received forgiveness and grace. That’s why she has such a strong conscience.”
Davis worked as a deputy county clerk right out of high school for her mother, Jean Bailey, who served as clerk for 37 years until her daughter replaced her in the elected position in January. Nathan, Davis’ son, now works in the office as a deputy clerk.
She is paid $80,000 per year and can only be removed from office through impeachment by the state legislature.
Liberty Counsel, formed to defend religious freedom, says it is representing Davis without charge. Various religious and conservative groups have also been raising money on the Internet on her behalf.
Her objection to gay marriage has triggered a firestorm of online comments since the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage. Davis has been both praised and ridiculed.
Paul Semisch, president of the Morehead Ministerial Association, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the controversy has divided pastors and churches in the area.
“It all depends on the way you understand what the Bible means,” said Semisch, an elder in the First Christian Church of Morehead. “And what salvation means, and what God’s love means.”
Lana Bellamy is a reporter for the Ashland, Ky., Daily Independent.