What does Kim Davis want?
In all the verbiage about Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples and her subsequent jail sentence, there’s been a great deal of muddled thinking as well as a great many accusations.
The best article I’ve seen so far on what is actually happening with Davis is this by Eugene Volokh, who places the case squarely in the context of legal precedent involving employment law and religious objections to elements of a job. He discusses what type of excuses are allowed and under what circumstances.
One of the points Volokh makes caused me to go “Aha!,” because it clarified Kim Davis’ position in a way that indicates quite strongly that she isn’t out to deny gay people marriages. So those who call her a bigot should take a look at this (not that most of them will, because it would spoil the agenda):
…[I]t seems to me that Davis has a much stronger claim under state law for a much more limited exemption. Davis’s objection, it appears (see pp. 40, 133, and 139 of her stay application and attachments), is not to issuing same-sex marriage licenses as such. Rather, she objects to issuing such licenses with her name on them, because she believes (rightly or wrongly) that having her name on them is an endorsement of same-sex marriage. Indeed, she says that she would be content with
“Modifying the prescribed Kentucky marriage license form to remove the multiple references to Davis’ name, and thus to remove the personal nature of the authorization that Davis must provide on the current form.”
Now this would be a cheap accommodation that, it seems to me, a state could quite easily provide. It’s true that state law requires the County Clerk’s name on the marriage license and the marriage certificate. But the point of RFRAs, such as the Kentucky RFRA, is precisely to provide religious objectors with exemptions even from such generally applicable laws, so long as the exemptions don’t necessarily and materially undermine a compelling government interest.
And allowing all marriage licenses and certificates ”” for opposite-sex marriages or same-sex ones ”” to include a deputy clerk’s name, or just the notation “Rowan County Clerk,” wouldn’t jeopardize any compelling government interest. To be sure, it would have to be clear that this modification is legally authorized, and doesn’t make the license and certificate invalid. But a court that grants Davis’s RFRA exemption request could easily issue an order that makes this clear.
Indeed, Kim Davis has filed a federal complaint against state officials under, among other things, the Kentucky RFRA. And, as I noted, one of the proposed accommodations that she herself has suggested, albeit in the federal stay application, is the simple removal of her name.
Seems reasonable to me, and it also seems to support the argument that she is motivated by freedom of religion issues.
There are any number of quite reasonable accommodations to Christian work related issues. The left doesn’t want to make them because it’s goal is to destroy marriage, the family, Christianity. They do make accommodations to Muslims and Marxists.
And I believe the judge is a “Republican” appointee. Another “evolved conservative”.
From an activist standpoint, the important thing in the Davis conflict is to win a tangible concession with a social application.
Progress is then manufactured by investing that concession as a building block to move forward the greater social cultural/political engineering project.
To further the agenda in the narrative contest for the zeitgeist, the legal issue need not necessarily match the cultural issue on every point in order to be constructive. The won concession is a building block, not the whole building. The legal issue only needs to be related to the cultural issue for the won concession to be useful for engineering the greater good.
Thus, the Left opposes even seemingly reasonable limited concessions like Davis’s request because they understand how the activist game is played. They know one building block sets up the next building block. And the next, until the whole social cultural/political edifice is altered. They’ve done it that way and understand the threat of little things growing to big things when cultivated purposefully by activists.
Slippery slope is a logical fallacy in rhetoric because rhetoric focuses on the argument at hand rather than the arguer’s greater intentions as a social engineer. In activism, slippery slope is means to ends in the social cultural/engineering project.
For activists who take up Davis’s cause, it behooves them to understand the parameters of the legal issue at hand and win the tangible concession therein and recognize how to apply their victory progressively in the greater context of the activist game.
FIX: In activism, slippery slope is means to ends in the social cultural/political engineering project.
Davis is not the bigot. Neither are are other conscientious dissenters. The sanctimonious hypocrites are the supporters of congruence (“=”) with a variable but selective modulus. The rainbow flag is the contemporary symbol to mark reestablishment of institutional discrimination.
This case simply baffles me. I should think that at the worst, she could be fired or disciplined for refusing to do her job in the manner prescribed by her employer.
To jail her? What pretext? The Supreme Court ruled that same sex marriage was legal. Does that really require that someone be jailed for not participating in the process? If so, we are further down the slippery slope toward tyranny than I realized.
I hope that she has good legal representation, and that they sue the pants off whatever entity the Judge represents, and the authority that jailed her.
Volokh’s chatter is the mumblings a a lawyer ferreting through the “ifs” and “buts” which can entrance only other lawyers.
The big picture is lost.
And the big picture is what this is all about. One does not win battles by picking nits.
We don’t have any warriors. We have good-hearted nit-pickers.
Thanks Neo, for the Volokh take. If Davis got everything she wanted, then perhaps the Marriage Certif will declare itself issued by the Office of County Clerk, Blank County, Kentucky without naming the clerk, and possibly with some disclaimer that the union is recognized solely as a legal formality and holds no personal endorsement from the clerk. I wish we had something better than this to fight for, and had a heroine with a more appealing history.
You know what they said about what happens when people think they will be the last to be eaten right?
Or that prose about not coming to the defense of Jews because they weren’t a Jew.
If this Democrat County Clerk has a problem with her name appearing on a marriage license, then she has as option, resign. If her religious beliefs interfere with her performing her duties, she has an option, resign. This is a civil instrument, not a religious one. The state does not sanction religious ceremonies. That is left to churches, synagogues, and mosques, which have every right to not perform same sex ceremonies. This woman is acting as though she officiating at a religious ceremony. She is not. If she can’t perform her duties as county clerk, she has an option, resign.
The Other Chuck:
Perhaps you are reading-comprehension-challenged. Or maybe you didn’t even follow the link and attempt to read the Volokh article in the first place. Because that issue is the heart of what the article deals with. It goes into great detail on why just saying “he/she should resign if he/she doesn’t want to do something for religious reasons” is not what the law in the US is, and there are 40 years of precedent for saying that.
Here is just one excerpt from the article, but you really need to read the entire article. And if you’ve already read it, then you need to read it again, more carefully:
Oh, and the fact that issuing a marriage license is not officiating at a religious ceremony is completely irrelevant.
I don’t have a problem with reading comprehension. I do have a problem with religious exemptions whether they are Muslim taxi cab drivers or county clerks. That Volokh has highlighted this out for the county clerk with apparent approval rather than come to the defense of separation of church and state is strange given his usual take on constitutional issues. With a growing Muslim population I see any religious exemption, especially for government workers and doubly so for elected officials, as a foot in the door for Sharia. It has little to do with this particular woman’s Christian beliefs and everything to do with keeping sectarianism at bay.
The Other Chuck:
If you’re against any religious exemptions, you should have explained that. But you never mentioned it. So you seem to now be saying that you were expressing your personal opinion of what the law should be rather than discussing what the law actually is at all; your personal opinion in this case happens to run counter to the law.
As I understand your most recent comment, then, you are against all religious exemptions even if they are easily accommodated at little hardship to the state (as her leaving her name off the licenses would be). And your reasoning appears to be to prevent sharia law from taking hold. You seem to believe, among other things, that the courts are unable to make distinctions between small accommodations for religious beliefs and the imposition of religious law on others. The courts are able to make those distinctions, and if they cease to be able to make a rather simple distinction such as that then we are in much much bigger trouble than the trouble over what is the proper religious accommodation.
Neo, if removing Kim Davis name from the marriage certificates would accommodate her religious objection, that seems like a reasonable compromise. However, she has stated that issuing the licenses from her office is not acceptable. This seems clearly a case of someone refusing to carry out the law.
I won’t question her sincerity. She has apparently come to Jesus recently and seems determined to prove her faith before the whole world. If what Wikipedia writes about her personal life is true, she has a lot of provin’ to do.
Davis has been married four times to three different men.[4] The first three marriages ended in divorce in 1994, 2006, and 2008. She is the mother of twins, who were born five months after her divorce from her first husband. Her third husband is the biological father of the twins, who were adopted by her second husband, Joe, who is also her fourth and current husband.[28]
Joe supports her stance against same-sex marriage.[27] One of Davis’s twin sons, Nathan, works in her office as a deputy clerk and has taken the same position of denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Davis_%28county_clerk%29
Neo:
As I understand your most recent comment, then, you are against all religious exemptions even if they are easily accommodated at little hardship to the state…
No. Religious conscientious objectors during the wartime draft years made sense because they were conscripted into service. No one forces you to run for elective office, or buy a taxi medallion, or open a cake shop. What this all boils down to is using personal religious beliefs, no matter how sincere they may be, to void a law you find objectionable.
The Other Chuck:
The problem is that disallowing religious exemptions of a reasonable sort would burden religious people and make it difficult for them to make a living or hold public office. The key is “reasonable.” I think it’s very reasonable that Kim Davis requested only that her name be taken off the licenses, as well as any reference to the clerk. The only reason she didn’t want the office to issue the licenses is because they either had her name on them or they said they were done by the county clerk, and she is the county clerk. She wanted them to be issued in some generic way by the county, without either her name or her official title on them.
It’s a very reasonable accommodation and could have been done quite easily. Freedom of religion is worth a bit of accommodation. She is not wanting to deprive gay couples of the right to marry in that county, and her wishes could have been easily accommodated. Notice that the more you look into what she actually was asking, the more reasonable and logical it becomes, and the clearer it is that it is a matter of personal conscience rather than a desire to stop the process of gay marriages. She certainly does not seem to be a bigot, although you had originally called her one.
It is also important to understand that when she ran for office, gay marriage was not legal in her state. In fact, the state has still not done anything to make it legal (nor has the US Congress—just the Supreme Court). So the duties of her job changed dramatically in midstream, which makes for a particularly special circumstance. She ran for office in good faith, and was elected by the people in good faith, before the SCOTUS judgment was rendered.
Her marital past is completely and utterly irrelevant to me, although it is my understanding that it’s not unusual for sinners to become religious later on:
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
Where’s the evidence that Chuck cares about freedom of religion vs Obeying his Leftist masters?
She certainly does not seem to be a bigot, although you had originally called her one.
I never called Kim Davis a bigot nor do I believe she is one. I think she is sincere in her religious beliefs, as I said.
The Other Chuck:
I somehow got you confused with this commenter named “charles,” who did call Davis a bigot.
You’re the other charles, though: Chuck. And you did not call her a bigot. So I apologize for my error.