Via @EsotericCD comes this latest action in the same-sex marriage wars:
BREAKING: Kentucky clerk’s office denies marriage license to gay couple despite US Supreme Court ruling.
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 1, 2015
Speaking as a same-sex marriage supporter: I was and am adamantly opposed to using the courts to force Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis to issue the licenses in the first place. I therefore feel that her continuing defiance is a matter for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and does not really require my personal input. But it does require the personal input of both Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D) and Kentucky Governor Steve Bershear (D). Spoiler warning: neither man particularly wants to be involved in this issue.
But they will be, because Kim Davis is an elected official. She can’t be fired; she can be impeached, but I suspect that selling that to the Kentucky state legislature would be tricky. A judge, of course, could order her jailed for contempt, and that will just get even more awkward for Attorney General Jack Conway (D). Who, by the way, is running for Governor in Kentucky this year! How do any of you think arresting a defiant elected official is going to play in Paducah? Another spoiler warning: it won’t play well. The public is about evenly split on whether county clerks should be removed from office for refusing to issue gay marriage, with an additional significant percentage wanting marriage licenses to be issued by the state instead. That same poll showed that a comfortable majority of Kentuckians opposed the Supreme Court decision that dictated this mess in the first place.
So I ask, again: what does Attorney General Jack Conway (D) plan to do about all of this? – Because he should have an answer for this. A nice, big, public answer. Unless he’s afraid that the Commonwealth of Kentucky wouldn’t like it…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: What would I do in this situation? I would not try to subvert the legislative process using the judiciary. When it happened anyway, I would take the time to point and laugh at the purblind fools who did subvert the process, and who are now uncomfortably dealing with the aftermath. Which is, hey, what I’m doing now! So I guess there’s your answer.
PPS: Matt Bevin, the Republican running for Governor, wants Kentucky county clerks to get out of the marriage license business altogether. Just have the clerks file them and be done with it. Seems reasonable enough.
And she’s using her office in a religious capacity in defiance of her civil duties, which obviously violates the 1st Amendment. She’s “making laws” abridging the “exercise” of the SSM religion.** I do not support that religion either, but if she cannot perform her duties as assigned she should resign, not make a travesty of her office.
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** Everyone has a religion, even if one so limited as their own gratification.
Bullpucky.
You have it exactly backwards. The government cannot compel anyone in any capacity to be complicit with blasphemy. This is what the First Amendment protects against (among other things).
Our “blasphemy” is their sacrament; the limits of pluralistic society.
At this point, my give a damn quotient is zero.
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They can go to hell.
All of which distracts us from the larger question: what is Democratic Attorney General – and candidate for governor – Jack Conway’s opinion on this? 🙂
@Moe–That’s just the backdrop for the question 😀
I’m pretty sure the Supreme Court has already won the gold medal for making a “travesty of their office.”
I say put her name up with Rosa Parks , Lech Walesa , Mahatmas Ghandi and all those other simple strong souls that stood up and said : “ENOUGH “
There is one particular point that interests me, which the Supreme Court seems to have ignored – but it won’t be ignored forever. We happen to have some people in this country of the Muslim faith, some of the Hindu, maybe a few Buddhists, even a few Orthodox Jews… and I’d venture to say their faith beliefs are not in sync with the Supreme Court ‘made out of thin air’ ruling demanding that everyone become heretics to their faith (and 5,000 years of recorded history) to go along with this particular declaration. What’s going to happen when the issue rears it’s ugly head for them? After all, it can’t just be about making Christians become non-Christians.
Maybe not explicitly, or even logically, but “making Christians become non-Christians” has been their MO for quite some time…..
I am waiting for a gay couple to insist a Muslim bakery bake them a wedding cake. Surely none of the brave people backing bankrupting people would have a problem with going after a Muslim instead of a Christian, right? Right?
Fired. Non-feasance of office.
Which is exactly the thing that Jack Conway is terrified of doing. If this is the correct statute…
http://www.lrc.ky.gov/statutes/statute.aspx?id=22899
…it’d have to be an actual trial; and the feds would want it to be on the county or state level. It’s a sticky wicket for Conway, and no mistake…
No, wait, county clerks aren’t on that list (because they’re elected officials?). So maybe nevermind.
What will Jack Conway do? Squirm, probably.
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Me? Imma have some metaphorical popcorn. It’d be nice to have had two Republican governors in this state in my lifetime.
And it seems that the clerk in question is also a Democrat.
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Yup, it’s popcorn time.
Just throwing this out there .. what if the clerk was refusing to issue firearms permits because she was a Quaker?
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I have much respect for (although I do not share) religious rights, but .. I have to take the position that the best use of *this* religious protest is to shame a Dem and to get the Supremes to clarify their position.
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Mew