The freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment is one of the most cherished rights we enjoy as Americans. Sadly, it's also one of the most abused and misrepresented planks of the Constitution – as it's being abused today in the case of Kim Davis.
Davis is the clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who refused to issue marriage licenses to any couples, gay or straight, once the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gay couples could also apply. Same-sex marriage is against her religion, she says.
For refusing to obey the law, Davis, a Democrat, was ordered to jail by federal Judge David Bunning, a George W. Bush-appointed Republican. Five days later, she was released from jail on condition that she not interfere with marriage licenses issued by other clerks in her office, to all couples.
Before sounding the alarm about rampant lawlessness, it's important to keep Kim Davis' story in perspective. Davis is one of only three out of 120 county clerks in Kentucky who have refused to comply with the Supreme Court's order. And in my research, I could find only two other county clerks in the whole country who've defied the court – one in Texas, one in Oregon, which in itself is a reflection of how public attitudes toward same-sex marriage have changed dramatically.
So, in many ways, the jailhouse saga of Kim Davis is no big deal. She's just another lawbreaker on the wrong side of history. But Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, partly for their own political purposes, are making her a big deal. They visited her in Kentucky, and they've hailed her as a national hero.
In Davis' defense, Huckabee makes three arguments: The Supreme Court's decision is not binding; her religious liberty is being violated; and she's one with the nation's civil rights leaders in protesting unjust laws. He's wrong on all three counts.
According to Huckabee (he actually said this), Supreme Court decisions do not have the force of law until each state has individually enacted legislation to incorporate that decision into state law – thereby denying a legal principle of the primacy of Supreme Court opinions first established in 1803 by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, and confirmed several times since. You'd think a candidate for president would know that.
He's equally wrong about erosion of Davis' First Amendment rights. Nobody's denying her the freedom to practice her religion. As a Christian, she has a right to believe (wrongly) that same-sex marriage is banned by the Bible. But, as an American, she also has an obligation to obey the law.
The idea that, based on our faith, we can choose which laws to obey and which ones not to obey is the same argument made by Islamist extremists. Do you really think Mike Huckabee would defend a Muslim clerk who refused to grant marriage licenses to Christians? Host Michael Smerconish asked the right question on CNN: "Is this woman in jail because she's being denied her religious freedom, or is she more like an American version of the Taliban?"
Most absurd of all is the assertion that Kim Davis is some kind of modern-day civil rights leader. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has even compared her to Rosa Parks. Puh-leeze! Obviously, there's one big difference: Martin Luther King and his followers were fighting to extend equal rights under the Constitution to all Americans. By contrast, Kim Davis and her fellow evangelicals are fighting to deny equal rights to some Americans, based only on their sexual orientation, which is both un-American and un-Christian.
Thank God, at least one Republican candidate for president has shown some common sense on this issue. I may agree with Kim Davis on the court's decision, said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, but she still has an obligation to obey the law. After all, as Kasich also pointed out, she's not running a church where she has to perform gay marriages. She's running a government office where she only has to hand out marriage licenses – a job to which she was elected, took an oath of office to perform and is paid $80,000 a year.
Even with Davis out of jail, Huckabee and Cruz will continue to paint her as a victim. But they'll have a harder time holding her up as a true Christian. As reported by CNN, she's been divorced three times and married four times. And when divorced from her first husband, she was reportedly already five months pregnant with a child fathered by the man who eventually became her third husband. Kim Davis is no Rosa Parks. She's no Christian role model, either.
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