The Rowan Country Rights Coalition, April Miller and Karen Roberts and just about any of us who champion freedom in this country, can all rest a little easier this week. Miller and Roberts, famously denied a marriage license by the equally now famous Kim Davis, just got married!
All morality aside, even a judge agreed that by Davis acting on what she felt was “God’s authority,” denying a gay couple the possibility of marriage surely allowed by the U.S. Supreme court in Obergefell v. Hodges, the clerk committed a crime. And as much as sides were quickly drawn over Davis’ exercising her faith (and being jailed…for five days) and Miller and Roberts attempting to continue their relationship in what the Federal government presently allows, the story created a firestorm of press.
Agreeing or not with a law because of personal beliefs is certainly something this country is built on. Protesting, attempting to change a law, all these actions are legal and are indeed practiced by plenty of our citizens daily when they come up against something they simply cannot abide by for whatever reason (though abide by it they must until/if the law is changed.) But an officer of the court-which Davis’ job makes her-can’t simply decide to not enforce a law, for whatever reason. And though Mike Huckabee can call Davis’ plight part of the so-called “crimininalization of Christianity,” the fact is she faces further legal action here, as law dictates she should.
As an elected official, Davis cannot be fired though, she’d have to endure an actual impeachment proceeding from the Kentucky House of Representatives, with charges for that impeachment brought to bear by the state’s Senate.
One does wonder, not only how this story will end (if it ever will) but over what American University’s Washington College of Law Professor Steve Vladeck said about Davis, “waived any right to have an objection to issuing same-sex marriage licenses when she ran for the job.”
Was she simply waiting for this kind of a brouhaha to come her way sooner more then later?
