Politics - News Analysis

Martyr Kim Davis Who Denied Gay Marriage Licenses Ordered to Pay Whopping Sum to Gay Couple

It's about time she was truly held to account.

Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who famously refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples despite the legality of same-sex marriage, is back in the news. This time it’s because one of the couples she shut down due to her evangelical beliefs has sued her, and she lost. We should also mention this God-fearing Christian woman has been married four times, so we know it’s a topic she takes very seriously.

The outcome of the plaintiffs’ win? Davis has been ordered to pay $260,000 in legal fees — PLUS $100,000 in damages — to the suing couple. As usual, the losing party must pay the legal fees in a civil suit like this. But the damages represent the harm she did to the couple, who were simply seeking a legal document which she decided was against her religion.

Davis’ lawyer argued that she shouldn’t have to pay anywhere near that much money, but Judge David L. Bunning didn’t see it that way.

Liberty Counsel, the far-right evangelical group that provided Davis with legal representation, plans to appeal the decision, of course. Their official website shows that they refuse to even use the word marriage in reference to same-sex unions without the use of quotation marks:

Former Rowan County Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis is a professing Christian with a sincerely held religious belief and conviction based on God’s Word that marriage is exclusively a union between one man and one woman. As a result, when the two same-sex couple plaintiffs insisted that she sign their “marriage” license, Kim could not authorize nor approve the “marriage” according to her conscience and sincerely held religious beliefs. Having received no accommodation from Governor Steve Beshear or the legislature on June 27, 2015, Kim discontinued issuing all marriage licenses because of her sincere religious beliefs. However, she never stopped any person from obtaining a marriage license from any other county clerk or official.

Judge Bunning ruled that Kim violated “clearly established” law when she ceased issuing all marriage licenses and she spent six days in jail. However, the refusal of Governor Beshear to accommodate Kim violated her free exercise rights under both the First Amendment and Kentucky law. When Governor Matt Bevin took office in December 2015, he immediately issued an executive order accommodating all Kentucky clerks who refused to issue marriage licenses that conflict with their religious beliefs. In April 2016, the Kentucky General Assembly unanimously passed legislation that provided accommodation for clerks who object to issuing marriage licenses that conflict with their religious beliefs.

It is the sincerely held belief of your humble author that if something neither breaks your leg nor picks your pocket, you have no business opposing it. But hey, what do I know?

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meet the author

Andrew is a dark blue speck in deep red Central Washington, writing with the conviction of 18 years at the keyboard and too much politics to even stand. When not furiously stabbing the keys on breaking news stories, he writes poetry, prose, essays, haiku, lectures, stories for grief therapy, wedding ceremonies, detailed instructions on making doughnuts from canned biscuit dough (more sugar than cinnamon — duh), and equations to determine the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. A girlfriend, a dog, two cats, and two birds round out the equation, and in his spare time, Drewbear likes to imagine what it must be like to have spare time.

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