During a Tuesday morning interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis said that she never intended to become a national figure, but that she would stand by her Christian beliefs even if it meant going back to jail for altering same-sex marriage license forms.
Davis garnered national attention when she stopped issuing all marriage licenses in June in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage. She was sued by two same-sex couples and two heterosexual couples, prompting a federal judge to order her to issue the licenses.
When Davis refused to do so, citing “God’s authority,” she was jailed. During her five-day stint behind bars, the clerk’s office resumed issuing marriage licenses, though they did not include Davis’ name. U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning ruled that the licenses were valid regardless of her missing name, and released Davis on the condition that she would not interfere with her employees.
The Associated Press reported that upon her return to work on September 14, however, Davis confiscated the marriage licenses that were issued in her absence and replaced them with licenses that read, “pursuant to federal court order.”
The reissued licenses do not mention Rowan County, nor do they mention the name of Kim Davis or any reference to a “deputy clerk.”
These actions could land Davis back in jail. The American Civil Liberties Union, representing several couples suing Rowan County, filed a court motion Monday asking the clerk’s office to reissue the licenses, stating that the validity of the altered licenses is “questionable at best.”
The ACLU also accused Rowan County of supporting policies that could be characterized as homophobic. The lawyers for the couples wrote in the filing:
The adulterated marriage licenses received by Rowan County couples will effectively feature a stamp of animus against the LGBT community, signaling that, in Rowan County, the government’s position is that LGBT couples are second-class citizens unworthy of official recognition and authorization of their marriage licenses but for this Court’s intervention and Order.
The ACLU claims that the actions of Davis are creating “humiliation and stigma” for the same-sex couples, but Davis denies any intent to be offensive.
“I have never once spouted a word of hate. I have not been hateful,” she told Paula Faris of ABC News on Good Morning America. She also stated that the licenses going out of her office now, issued by a deputy clerk, don’t have her authorization and are “not valid in God’s eyes.”
Lawyers for the couples are asking the clerk’s office to reissue the altered licenses. If she refuses, the lawyers request that the judge put the office in receivership and appoint someone else to reissue the licenses.
According to constitutional law professor Sam Marcosson of the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law, such receiverships are “unusual and extraordinary” and are reserved for situations in which other legal remedies are unable to correct the violation. He observed that the plaintiffs are virtually seeking a “limited takeover” of the Rowan County clerk’s office, with another person in place to oversee the issuance of marriage licenses.
“It’s almost a worst-case scenario,” he said. “The worst-case scenario would be to send her to jail again.”
Liberty Council Chairman Mat Staver, who is serving as Davis’ lawyer, points out that Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear has already indicated that altered marriage licenses will continue to be recognized by the state. He asserts that for the ACLU, that isn’t enough. “The ACLU’s motion to again hold Kim Davis in contempt reveals that their interest is not the license but rather a marriage license bearing the name of Kim Davis,” Staver suggests, contending that the ACLU is merely after its own agenda: “They want her scalp to hang on the wall as a trophy.”
During her interview with Good Morning America, Davis addressed the various criticisms against her. She told Faris that she has been called a number of names by her critics, including a homophobe and a hypocrite, but that regardless of her four failed marriages and past adulteries, she is certain that she was forgiven for her transgressions when she became a Christian four years ago, and that her Christian beliefs matter more to her than her responsibilities as a county clerk.
“My constituents elected me. But the main authority that rules my life is the Lord,” she explained.
Davis told Faris that she even denied marriage licenses to her friends in same-sex relationships because she did not feel comfortable putting her name on a license that is antithetical to “what God ordained marriage to be.”
Another interview with Davis, this time with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, will be aired on Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on The Kelly File. USA Today writes that the interview “is expected to touch on whether Davis disobeyed a federal court order by altering marriage licenses.”
Photo: AP Images
