The “marry my computer” plaintiff who already has tried his stunt in at least two other states now has sued Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who was jailed by a federal judge without due process for refusing his order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, in violation of her faith.
Now Mark “Chris” Sevier is suing Davis for a license to marry his Mac.
“This lawsuit is frivolous,” said Mat Staver, chief counsel of Liberty Counsel, which defended Davis’ religious rights against a series of complaints from “gay” duos as well as the actions of Judge David Bunning.
Sevier also named Gov. Matt Bevin and Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear in his lawsuit.
Sevier says he is trying to prove “same-sex marriage” has the same “legitimacy as a human marrying an inanimate object,” Liberty Counsel reported.
“There is obviously no right for a man to marry a machine,” Staver said. “When you make gender irrelevant to a gender-based relationship, you open Pandora’s box and make a mockery out of marriage.”
The New York Daily News reported in May that a Florida judge denied a motion by Sevier to marry his “porn-filled Apple computer.”
The report said Sevier stated in his motion that if “gay” couples “have the right to marry their object of sexual desire, even if they lack corresponding sexual parts, then I should have the right to marry my preferred sexual object.”
Judge Robert Hinkle speculated the motion was satirical or “removed from reality,” and he dismissed the case.
Sevier also has tried out his claim, without success so far, in Texas.
The Daily News reported the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility in 2011 said the “troubled Mac lover,” although he earned a law degree from Vanderbilt, was barred from practicing law for a “mental infirmity or illness.”
He also reportedly was arrested in Nashville for stalking country music star John Rich, according to The Tennessean newspaper.
At the Above the Law blog, a report said Sevier also targeted Utah with his claim.
Davis most recently has asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate Bunning’s orders and drop the issue, since the Kentucky Legislature approved a law granting her request to remove her name and identification from marriage licenses.
That accommodation was what she originally had requested from Bunning.
The motion submitted on her behalf by Liberty Counsel argues that on July 14 – only two weeks before the case is scheduled for oral argument – Kentucky Senate Bill 216 will take effect, “modifying Kentucky law regarding the issuance and authorization of marriage licenses and, as a result, moot Davis’ consolidated appeals.”
The bill “modifies the Kentucky marriage licensing scheme to remove entirely a county clerk’s name, personal identifiers, and authorization from any license, thereby providing through a change in the law the very religious accommodation Davis sought from the beginning of this litigation.”
The motion called the bill, passed unanimously by the Kentucky Legislature and signed by Gov. Bevin, “an exercise of appropriate and responsible lawmaking.”
“It also renders Davis’ appeals from the district court’s orders moot and therefore deprives this court of appellate jurisdiction over her appeals.”
The filing said the court, in dismissing the appeals, “should also follow its normal course of vacating the district court’s orders on appeal.”
Previous court filings pointed out that Bunning ignored protections for Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, in both the state and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act in his activism for “gay marriage.”
“The district court … never considered the federal RFRA as applied to its finding of contempt, and it never entered any subsequent order addressing Davis’ federal RFRA defense to contempt,” the court record reveals.
“The federal RFRA provides that ‘government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability,’ except that ‘government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person – (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling government interest.'”
The case centers on the U.S. Supreme Court’s creation of same-sex marriage last summer. In Kentucky, county clerks issue licenses, and Davis decided to suspend issuing any marriage licenses, so all comers would be treated alike. She asked for the simple accommodation of removing her name and title from the marriage licenses, but then-Gov. Steve Beshear refused.
Then, despite the fact that licenses could be obtained in nearby counties, same-sex activists sued her.
“From the beginning, Kim Davis requested the very accommodation for her religious convictions that the Kentucky legislature passed and which Gov. Matt Bevin signed into law. The previous governor could have made the same accommodation but refused to do so. Instead, he was willing to violate deeply held religious convictions about marriage in order to press his ideological agenda. Now that Kim Davis obtained the accommodation she has always requested, we notified the court of appeals that the case has become moot and no further legal proceedings are needed. We are very pleased with this outcome,” said Staver.
An earlier filing explained Bunning even refused to allow Davis due process in the case.
Staver previously explained: “Our Founding Fathers believed in the right to follow one’s conscience so much that they protected religious liberty in the First Amendment. The first Americans traveled to this faraway land for the right to exercise their religion according to their own hearts, not government mandate. From the Mayflower Compact to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell, no court precedent or legislative mandate says that same-sex marriage must be held at every wedding venue, photographed by a specific photographer, celebrated by all bakers, or, in this case, licensed by a particular clerk. Then and still today, Americans enjoy the free exercise of religion and the freedom to follow Biblical principles in their personal and professional lives.”
When Bevin took office, he immediately took executive action to protect Davis and other county clerks. The bill means the order can’t be reversed by a future governor.
