By Darren Smith Weekend Contributor
After the Rowan County Kentucky Clerk, Democrat Kim Davis, defied a court order to issue gay couples marriage licenses, and was subsequently arrested by the U.S. Marshal’s Service and jailed, her husband stated that she chose to remain in jail rather than compromise her religious beliefs by performing her statutory duty. Her contempt of court ruling will stand until she resumes issuing such licenses and thus in jail she shall remain.
And so it should.
The issue is not the content of her religious beliefs that are on trial. It is that of failure to perform her duty and denial of a civil right as mandated by the Supreme Court. For this reason she has two choices: being in contempt indefinitely; or resigning her position. For the near term it is as simple as that. If she continues her defiance, a third party must step up, show some leadership, and make the decision for her by ejecting her from office.
When a politician takes an oath of office upon their swearing in they affirm to uphold the constitutions of their respective states and that of the United States, and that they will discharge also their statutory and common law duties mandated by the legislature and the state’s courts. This is not an optional recommendation, it is conditional of receiving the position and taking salary and benefits. In this case Ms. Davis knew, as a second generation politician to her mother’s thirty seven year tenure as the former county clerk, what these duties encompass. The excuses she made to justify her failure to perform on her duty are 100% irrelevant whatever they might be, religious, personal or otherwise. Her authority does not include usurping the legislature and the courts to suit her own goals.
Ms. Davis, through her attorney, claimed that a compromise can be made by the removal of her name from the certificates of marriage granted to those couples she objects to. This also is completely unacceptable. The duality of this settlement offer is that she previously stated the certificates issued by her deputy clerks, in her absence, were void.
The authorization official charged with issuing marriage licenses is that of the County Clerk, and from working convention is usually performed by a deputy delegated and commissioned through this authority. If Ms. Davis chooses to remove her name from the form, the marriage license could be contested as being invalid since it was not assented to by the county clerk. For this reason she implored the governor to call the legislature into a special session to amend the statutory language to facilitate the compromise that would be agreeable to this one individual politician–at a cost of course of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The hubris and arrogance she exudes on that demand alone certainly should be enough cause for the legislature to impeach her or the voters to generate a recall. If this becomes necessary to remove her from office a failure to act upon this by either entity and allow this usurper to remain in office would be a true embarrassment to themselves in the eyes of a great many.
Anecdotally, all of us who have worked in an official capacity know that sometimes you cannot do what you like. We cannot legally make arbitrary actions that are outside the law. To do so leads straight to corruption and an erosion of the system and the liquidity of society. The result is almost always a patchwork of patronage and differing rules and the abandonment of trust in the public that ultimately grants the government its legitimacy. The controversy is this, we stop malfeasances of office now before they lead to worse.
Not only that but in addition to moneys wasted in salary payable to an incarcerated elected official–who is unable to perform her job–it is all but certain expensive lawsuits alleging violations of civil rights will result. It is an outcome frankly the county government deserves.
Ms. Davis clearly wants to have her cake and eat it too. She reportedly takes an $80,000.00 salary along with benefits. In addition, she has family members within the employ of her office. This is why I personally find political dynasties to be in direct conflict with democracy, because it almost always leads to nepotism at least and despotism at worse. The Rowan County Clerk’s Office seems a great family business for the Davis family because that is how she seems to choose to operate it. But as the Rolling Stones famously sang…
It is time that Kim Davis “gets what she needs”…termination of her employment.
By Darren Smith
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Oh, and she’s A DEMOCRAT! Inconvenient truth.
County Clerk is AN ELECTED OFFICE. She is not a govt. employee, she is and ELECTED OFFICIAL. Liberals, who LOVE govt., don’t even have a rudimentary understanding of it. You can’t make this stuff up. LOL!
“She took the job swearing an oath to uphold the state constitution, and now she does not want to do that. That’s fine. She has the right to resign her position and seek another political office in which her beliefs will not interfere, or find another job.”
Actually, she’s ignoring her oath of office to follow something she believes is right. The right thing to do would be to resign from office now that she cannot honor her oath. That would set a precedent that most elected officials would rather not be subject to and it certainly is not a precedent many in this blog endorse when their politician of choice “spits” on our constitution.
Bob Stone will eventually learn he is better off talking to his potted plants than the trolls here. A lifelong Dem County Clerk imprisoned by a conservative Republican. What cross currents. And, no one has responded to the Gavin Newsom and sanctuary cities law breaking. Hypocrisy, they name is Liberal.
*A White House official testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee that she took an oath to defend and uphold the wishes of George bush.
*Bush Administration officials ignored a subpoena to testify before Congress
*The Bush Administration threatened to fire an agency official if he testified that the administration Medicare Drug Plan would end up costing taxpayers more money rather than saving money, as the White House was claiming.
*Immunity for telecoms was inserted into the Patriot Act in the middle of the night.
*Immunity for Big Pharma was snuck into legislation in a similar fashion.
*Government researchers had their findings altered above their signatures without consultation.
*Then there’s the whole Iran-Contra affair and whatever Ollie North was doing in South America
*The S&L scandal, or the one that followed that before the Great Recession was inflicted upon us.
*Etc, etc, etc….
*Etc, etc, etc.
If anyone is incapable of shame it’s the conservatives who continue to insist that mendacity is a valid way of life. Sheesh.
Palsey Schultze – need cites for you claims about the Bush administration.
On 3/2/15 Kim Davis issued a marriage license to a couple who, surprisingly enough, the husband is a transman who’s ID still says female, yet Kim never checked ID as required by LAW!
Max-1 – my guess is the County Clerk did not issue the licence herself.
Paul C.
Yet, there’s that tax write off thingy…
Annie,
Exactly. It’s as if the person running the DMV decided women can’t drive just because that person running the place is Muslim… Same logic.
p.s.
A Chick-Fill-A CEO isn’t an elected official… FYI
Max, so she was forcing her religious beliefs upon her deputies. Violation of the Establishment Clause? She is a public employee of the govetnment.
Bob,
Incorrect. This is America and NO one faith is above another. Why is it JUST Christians are to be exempt FROM Governmental laws? Only Christians? See my Matt Blaum video above. Again, you need to support Sharia Laws in order to begin this debate about ‘accommodating’ for people’s religion.
Should a Muslim DMV worker be ‘ACCOMMODATED’ into denying a woman a driver’s license because Allah forbids it?
Bob?
Annie,
All of her clerks agreed to issue certificates… except her son.
Yes, nepotism runs in that office, too.
http://time.com/4018494/kentucky-marriage-clerk-loving-virginia/
A history lesson for the Kentucky clerk refusing to grant marriage licenses.
“It took years for the last wave of such local tests of Loving to finally die down, as explained by Julie Lavonne Novkov in her book Racial Union. It took another decade or so for the echo of Loving‘s implications to pass through the courts. (It wasn’t until 1984, for example, that the court ruled interracial couples couldn’t be discriminated against in child-custody decisions.) And it wasn’t until 2000 that Alabama actually removed its long-unenforceable anti-miscegenation law from its books.
If the fallout from Loving is any indication, those who side with the Kentucky clerk may have years of fight left to go—but their battle will likely be a losing one in the end.”
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/09/kentucky_clerk_kim_davis_appea.html
Davis and her deputy clerks were summoned to appear before U.S. District Judge David Bunning after citing her religious beliefs and “God’s authority” to deny the issuance of the licenses, the Associated Press reports.
Five of the six deputies had agreed to issue the licenses — only her son would not relent — but Davis refused to authorize them to do so.
So under the Sharia Law of Max, every city official that creates “sanctuaries” within cities by refusing to uphold immigration laws must be jailed immediately.
Max,
By Sharia Law, do you mean jailing every single public official that refuses to fulfill their official duties?
Is that why you have it in for Kim Davis?
She was in contempt of court. It’s within the Judge’s purview to decide her punishment.
Annie wrote: “She was in contempt of court. It’s within the Judge’s purview to decide her punishment.”
Her contempt of court was her not obeying the Judge’s unlawful order. She never violated any laws. The federal judge is the one violating the Constitution of Kentucky.
Karen,
In short, the answer is yes.
As I cited earlier.
http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/11/n-c-legislature-overrides-veto-allows-government-employees-to-not-do-gay-marriages/
See also:
http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/01/kentucky-clerk-not-issuing-gay-marriage-licenses-causes-uproar-north-carolina-shows-better-way/
There was no legitimate reason for denying the de minimis request of removing the name Kim Davis from the marriage licenses and jailing her instead.
Why was it after she was no longer in the County Clerk’s office and sitting in jail that her underlings were first allowed to provide marriage licenses? Did every one of the employees of the office have the same religious objection, or was she holding them back from providing the liscenses, forcing her religious belief system on the employees as well as those seeking a marriage liscense?
The Supreme Court is NOT above the Constitution. When the Supreme Court acts CONTRARY to the Constitution, their opinion does not have the force of law.
The Constitution is very clear that the laws are NOT created by the Supreme Court. Kim Davis is upholding her oath of office to uphold the Constitution and the laws of her State.
The legislative body of Kentucky may very well meet and change their laws in light of the Obergefell decision, but until that happens, Kim Davis is to uphold the laws that the people of her State voted for.
I am surprised at Darren for thinking that the moment the Supreme Court makes a decision in a particular case that the laws around the country are automatically changed. While traditionally that often happens, there is no law nor statement in the Constitution that such must take place. We are still a nation of laws, and the moment we bow to tyrants is the moment we cease to be a nation of laws.
It is a travesty of justice and a travesty of the rule of law that Kim Davis is in jail right now. She broke no law, which is why she is not held in jail because of a broken law. Kim Davis is in jail because a federal court judge ordered her to be put there. That is wrong. At least Martin Luther King, Jr. was put in jail for breaking a law. Not so in this case.