Defiant clerk Kim Davis still in jail after rejecting deal
Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, fast becoming the face of the anti-equal marriage brigade, has been jailed for contempt of court after repeatedly refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Yesterday she reportedly rejected a deal that would have seen her released if she allowed her deputies to process the licenses in her absence.
According to the New York Times, Judge David L Bunning of the United States District Court has secured commitments from five of Davis’s deputies to start handing out licenses. Davis is one of three of the state’s 120 clerks who are insisting that their religious ties will stop them from recognising equal marriage, which the Supreme Court legalised in June.
Same-sex couples are expected to try today (September 4) to obtain licenses from the Morehead office, and it’s not clear whether Davis’s deputies have the authorities to issue them without her consent. But Judge Bunning said: “We expect at the end of the day for the court’s orders to be complied with. That’s how things work here in America.”
https://twitter.com/WSAZbreaking/status/639551215404253184
April Miller, who sued after she and her same-sex partner were turned away by Davis, said she is “saddened” by the clerk’s incarceration, but her lawyer warned: “Religious liberty is not a sword with which government, through its employees, may impose particular religious beliefs on others.”
Her imprisonment has seemingly given much more traction to conservatives’ “persecution of Christians” argument, with Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz raging in a statement: “Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny.”
Davis’s lawyer Roger Gannam said: “Today, for the first time in history, an American citizen has been incarcerated for having the belief of conscience that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. And she’s been ordered to stay there until she’s willing to change her mind, until she’s willing to change her conscience about what belief is.”
It’s not clear how long Davis will remain locked up, especially if she remains adamant that she will continue ignoring the law.