An Important Distinction in Kentucky Clerk’s Refusal to Issue Same-Sex Marriage Licenses
The rights of a government employee vs. those of a private citizen
In Kentucky, a county clerk refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses despite the Supreme Court’s recent ruling has made her way into national headlines. Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis claims her religious beliefs have created an issue of conscience which prohibits her from participating in or condoning gay marriage. Citing God’s authority, Davis has stopped issuing all marriage licenses.
The whole affair turned into one horrid media circus:
ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos
ABC News reported Tuesday:
April Miller and Karen Roberts, tailed by television cameras and rival activists, were there when the doors opened Tuesday morning, hours after the Supreme Court rejected the clerk’s last-ditch request for a delay.
They hoped Davis would accept that her fight was lost and issue the licenses, ending the months-long controversy that has divided Rowan County, where the seat of Morehead is considered a progressive haven in Appalachian Kentucky.
Instead, Davis once again turned them away. On their way out, Miller and Roberts passed David Ermold and David Moore, 17 years a couple. “Denied again,” Roberts whispered in Moore’s ear.
Ermold said he almost wept. They demanded to talk to Davis, who emerged briefly on the other side of the counter.
“We’re not leaving until we have a license,” Ermold told her.
“Then you’re going to have a long day,” Davis replied.
Davis, an Apostolic Christian, stopped issuing all marriage licenses in June rather than comply with the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage nationwide.
Gay and straight couples sued, saying she should fulfill her duties as an elected official despite her personal religious faith. U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered her to issue the licenses, an appeals court affirmed that order, and the Supreme Court on Monday refused to intervene, leaving her no legal option to refuse.
And yet, she did.
CNN reports a Kentucky judge has called for a hearing to be held at 11:00 AM Thursday.
Davis is not the only individual protesting gay marriage though. Fellow Clerk, Casey Davis, has joined the cause citing first amendment justifications as refusal to carry out the law.
A fellow Kentucky clerk, Casey Davis, has protested alongside Kim Davis and insisted Tuesday on CNN’s “New Day” that “we’ve not tried to prevent” same-sex marriages, and “we’ve only tried to exercise our First Amendment rights.”
Casey Davis said gay couples could go to another county to get married when a county clerk objects due to religious beliefs.
“There was a lot of people that died for that right and I think we should be able to exercise it,” Davis told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota.
Casey Davis is now riding his bicycle from Louisville, Kentucky to the West coast to raise awareness for what he described as an assault on religious liberty.
In Court papers, lawyers for Kim Davis said that her “conscience forbids her from approving a (same-sex marriage) license — because the prescribed form mandates that she authorize the proposed union and issue a license bearing her own name and imprimatur.”
“In her belief,” the lawyers wrote, same-sex marriage “is not, in fact, marriage.”
They said issuing a same-sex license would amount to a “searing act of validation” that would “forever echo in her conscience.”
Do first amendment rights allow government employees the opportunity to cherry pick the laws they dispense?
Tuesday, Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina joined Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. To conclude the segment, Hewitt asked Fiorina to weigh in the Kentucky clerk situation.
Indicating she believed Davis’ acts to be inappropriate, Fiorina made an important distinction: Davis is a government employee and therefore, her sole purpose is to function as part of the government. Were Davis’ conscience based protest in the context of a private business though, the situation would certainly call into question, and appropriately so, religious liberties.
“First, I think that we must protect religious liberties with great passion and be willing to expend a lot of political capital to do so now because it’s clear religious liberty is under assault in many, many ways,” said Fiorina. “Having said that, when you are a government employee, I think you take on a different role. When you are a government employee as opposed to an employee of say another kind of organization, in essence, you are agreeing to act as an arm of the government.”
Clarifying her position on the Supreme Court’s recent gay marriage decision, Fiorina explained, “while I disagree with the Supreme Court decision, their actions are clear. I think in this particular case, this woman now needs to make a decision of conscience. Is she prepared to continue to work for the government, be paid by the government, in which case she needs to execute the government’s will, or does she feel so strongly about this that she wants to sever her employment with the government and go seek employment elsewhere where her religious liberties will be paramount over her duties as a government employee.”
Fiorina articulates the argument well and on this matter, I completely agree. It would seem we’re not the only ones either. Justice Scalia made the same argument in 2002, though obviously not in direct response to the Davis/Kentucky kerfuffle.
Jonathan Adler writes at WaPo:
Davis has a right to observe and adhere to her religious beliefs, but she does not have a right to her job as county clerk. The latter obligates her to follow federal law, including the applicable judgments of federal courts, and it is now the law of the land that the Constitution bars state governments from refusing to recognize same-sex marriages on equal terms with opposite-sex marriages. If, as Davis claims, her religious convictions bar her from issuing such a marriage license, she should resign.
Now Scalia has not, to my knowledge, said anything directly about Davis’s actions, but he has addressed the question of what public officials should do when their official obligations conflict with their religious conscience. Writing in “First Things” in 2002, Scalia explained that if he were to conclude that the death penalty is fundamentally immoral, he should no longer serve on the bench.
[W]hile my views on the morality of the death penalty have nothing to do with how I vote as a judge, they have a lot to do with whether I can or should be a judge at all. To put the point in the blunt terms employed by Justice Harold Blackmun towards the end of his career on the bench, when he announced that he would henceforth vote (as Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall had previously done) to overturn all death sentences, when I sit on a Court that reviews and affirms capital convictions, I am part of “the machinery of death.” My vote, when joined with at least four others, is, in most cases, the last step that permits an execution to proceed. I could not take part in that process if I believed what was being done to be immoral. . . .
[I]n my view the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply the laws and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course if he feels strongly enough he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penalty” and if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do.
Davis is in a similar position. Her official position obligates her to take part in the state’s licensing and recognition of marriages. Insofar as the state’s definition of an acceptable marriage differs from her own, Davis is obligated to follow the state’s rule so long as she maintains her current office.
Think of it this way. Someone who objects to war due to his religious conscience has a right to be a conscientious objector and not serve in the military, even were there to be a draft. But he does not have the right to serve as a military officer, draw a paycheck from the military and then substitute his own personal views of when war is justified for that of the government. The same applies here.
As Fiorina pointed out, if Davis feels so strongly about the issue that she cannot carry out the duties required by government employment, she ought to consider employment elsewhere.
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Comments
Carly, you’re a RINO, and your position on this isn’t the only indicator of that.
I don’t think this is an outrageous point of view. I just don’t agree with it.
It’s called civil disobedience. It’s OK for civil rights movement people in 1960’s and not this woman? Of course, someone has a right to disobey what they think is an unjust law. But if she disobeys, she must be prepared to yield to the consequences peacefully.
So, you don’t think the 1st Amendment applies to her? Because why? Christians don’t get “conscience clause” protections because gay nazis hate them so much?
No, because she holds a public office that requires that she do certain things. She certainly has every right to her religion and her conscience. She just doesn’t have a right to hold her office and refuse its functions on religious grounds.
Could a LDS (Mormon) person get elected to a liquor control agency and refuse to issue liquor licenses due to his/her religion? And would anyone feel they were being deprived of religious liberty if a court mandated they follow the law?
Except that she doesn’t believe her office requires her to do those things, and I don’t see how a federal court gets the right to tell her that it does. That would be her constituents’ role, and they seem to agree with her.
And yes, I think if an elected liquor commission were populated by prohibitionists they would be entitled not to issue licenses, and I don’t see how any court would have the authority to order them to do so. At most, a person who couldn’t get a license could ask the court to overturn the liquor laws as applied in that county, because they constituted an unconstitutional restraint of trade, and thus allow its sale without a license.
Except that she doesn’t believe her office requires her to do those things
That’s something I haven’t seen yet, which I might try to look up this weekend… just what are the Clerk’s statutory resposibilities regarding marriage licenses?
Of course, local media is still saying that she’s refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples… if they had a shred of integrity (or competence), they’d say that she’s not issuing licenses at all.
That’s an interesting comment, but I doubt an official can be a civil disobedient. They are “the government”.
Under this idea, the officials of Sand Francisco who have made their city a “sanctuary” for illegal aliens are civil disobedients. I ain’t buyin’ that.
I don’t care that the lady is a Dem, or that her position has virtually no legal legs to stand on.
I support her as a way to stick a finger in the eye of the “the elites” who keep imposing their views on the rest of us.
Don’t agree? Get back to me when Obama, Hillary and city councils of sanctuary cities are serving time, and we can talk.
Do you support her hypocritical religious double standard?
As Jimmy Fallon joked on his show: if anyone knows who shouldn’t be issued a marriage it’s her.
She’s been married 4 times, and engaged in extra-curricular swap the salami while married.
http://newsok.com/article/5444029
Didn’t her God tell her adultery was wrong, and swearing to love and honer her husbands meant for more then 2 years?
Still can’t cypher, or read, huh?
Her first marriage lasted 12 years, not 2.
It would be fair to note that she’s a typical Deemocrat, wouldn’t it?
When did she become religious?
A LOT of divorces are not just justified, but a matter of self-defense.
Still have to nitpick, huh.
Yeah one marriage lasted 12 years,two marriages lasted TWO YEARS.
Yup, I agree, she’s a typical god-obsessed Southern Democrat.
Actually, her SECOND marriage lasted 12 years. We have no information about how long her first marriage lasted.
Your regional bigotry is showing, you poor bigot.
I bet you’ll find deeply religious people in Massive-two-spits. You?
Yes, I support her 100% and I don’t care about your stupid ad hom attacks. GFY.
Her previous marriages, divorces, and adulteries were all before she became religious. She doesn’t justify them now. How is that a double standard? There are many former criminals who have mended their ways, and now condemn crime; do you think they have double standards too?
Fiorina is wrong, for one important reason: Davis is not a government employee, she’s an elected official. She doesn’t work for the government, she is the government, for the current purposes. Some small portion of the executive power of Rowan County rests in her. She is not answerable to anyone but the voters for how she does her job; the state legislature can remove her for “misdemeanors in office”, but not for simply doing her job as she sees fit.
It’s well established, since at least the Jefferson administration, that the executive branch is entitled to its own view of the law; the Supreme Court sets the judicial branch’s view, but the executive branch doesn’t have to agree with it. It seems to me that the same applies to state officials; they are entitled to disagree with the courts’ interpretation of the law, and to uphold the law as they understand it. Judges are not dictators, and unless there’s some law giving this judge the power to order her to issue licenses, he doesn’t have that power.
I think it’s high time that executive branch officials and legislators stood up to judicial tyranny. When Andrew Jackson defied the Supreme Court he was clearly in the wrong and the court was clearly in the right; he committed a terrible crime against humanity, almost as bad as the ones prosecuted at Nuremberg. But he was right about one thing: the judges needed taking down a notch. And if they needed it then, how much more so now.
Yeah, no, Milhouse. One of your loopier positions.
According to your doctrine, the EPA could say, “Phhht to you, bitches” to courts who ordered them to turn over various documents, and that would just be that. Imagine trying to curb the executive peacefully via the courts under THOSE conditions.
A locally elected sheriff could defy the law as handed down by the courts, and citizens would have no recourse except to the legislature?
While I admire the lady’s grit and faith, she’s simply wrong. Just insert a Sharia-believing county clerk in this scenario, and you can see what I’m saying is true. Nobody would say that that clerk is above the law, or the orders of the courts.
The executive branch ignoring the law? That’s sounds like the Obama administration creating facts on the ground.
Obama stacked the courts with Constitution trashing justices. Don’t see a problem with someone defying them on Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion grounds.
Invert the facts there, and see where that gets you. “President Cruz stacked the court with bigots who struck down affirmative action, but this university president has freedom of conscience, and we’re going to by-gawd have racial discrimination!”
Expand it, and you have a recipe for anarchy. “The courts (name a gripe), so I have a First Amendment right to (name an action or inaction in defiance of the law)”.
Now, you’re free to think we are there, and your two wrongs will make a right. I don’t. Not yet.
Question:
What if she were a muslim?
Would we be having this debate? Would she be in the same predicament?
https://legalinsurrection.com/2015/09/an-important-distinction-in-kentucky-clerks-refusal-to-issue-same-sex-marriage-licenses/comment-page-1/#comment-612944
Well, kinda my point in that post.
The answers are, “Yes, she would” and “Most of you would not support her”.
The lady is simply wrong. She’d be wrong regardless of her religion.
What if she were a muslim? Would we be having this debate? Would she be in the same predicament?
Yes, and yes. The idea that the law treats Moslems better than it does Xians is without any basis in fact.
The judiciary can demand documents from the executive. It just can’t tell the executive what to do. The EPA can disagree with the judiciary’s determination that a regulation is invalid, but it won’t be able to prosecute anyone for breaking it, so people can defy it with impunity. If a sheriff disagreed with a court he could go on enforcing the law as he liked, but if he arrested anyone anyone the court would issue a writ of habeas corpus, and the person would take him to court for false arrest and win.
Note carefully that Davis is not doing anything the court thinks she shouldn’t; she’s not doing someting the court thinks she should. I don’t see how the court has the authority to order her to do it.
And yes, of course a Moslem clerk would be in exactly the same boat. I don’t understand the delusion so many right-wing people have that the courts go easier on Moslems than on Xians.
I always loved Jackson’s “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it” statement.
You’re obviously not a Cherokee.
He was wrong on the issue at hand. Nobody disputes that. He was a despicable person, and committed a terrible crime. I want him off the $20. His name should go down in infamy. But I admire his courage in facing down the court.
Hmmm.
Her duties toward her electorate would seem to have something to do with it.
Of course her electorate doesn’t include God, so citing his authority may not be terribly apposite.
To me the matter is a bit simpler. The judge has the right, and quite arguably the duty, to hold this clerk in contempt for the remaining 38 months of her term, or until she yields, whichever comes first. The plaintiffs have apparently explicitly requested this not be done in favor of fining her at such a shocking level that she’ll be bankrupted in short order if she doesn’t yield. She has the option of embracing these penalties and not surrendering, but she will pay a severe price for it and an example will likely be made out of her.
I see what Milhouse is arguing, but I don’t see how it makes any sense here. Jurisdiction of federal courts over state officials and state courts was settled by force of arms and large cemeteries. Also, anyone who wants this woman to defy a settled issue of law and not be slapped down for it has no business calling for Hillary to be held accountable for violating national security. We don’t need civilization to descend to the point of, “When an elected official does it, it is not illegal.”
She is an elected official and thus a constitutional officer for the commenwealth of Kentucky. I am not sure what the laws are there, but I would suspect if she defies them and also court order she should be removed.
She is not in violation of any law.
Federal law still defines marriage the same way it always has – “…the word “marriage” means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word “spouse” refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”
Kentucky law also still defines marriage the way it always has.
Even if she were in clear violation of the law she would still have her 1st Amendment Right guaranteeing her freedom of conscience. All levels of government are prohibited from forcing her to choose between her livelihood and her conscience. There are SCOTUS rulings supporting this – which is why health care workers, and the hospitals they work at, can’t get sued for refusing to perform abortions. Its why supermarkets can’t fire, or even refuse to hire, muslims that refuse to handle pork or alcohol even in a business that regularly sells them.
Oh, and there is no “government employee” exception to the 1st Amendment. Never has been. Pathetic to see someone of Carly Fiorina’s stature making that crap up. Wasn’t her father a judge, and a Conservative one too? I guess sometimes the apple can fall very, very far from the tree.
“Even if she were in clear violation of the law she would still have her 1st Amendment Right guaranteeing her freedom of conscience.”
Yes she does. And she can take it with her all the way to jail and/or bankruptcy. She’s in violation of a federal judge’s order: he can’t fire her, but he an burn her butt legally.
This is old news. Or don’t you recall Alabama Governor Wallace trying to physically block 2 black students from registering at his state University? The courts said step aside. The Kennedy’s said step aside or the National Guard will arrest your ass. Wallace stepped aside.
It is not “a settled issue of law”. The supreme court does not have the authority to amend the constitution. If you believe that the law restricting marriage to mixed-sex couples was valid six months ago, then you must believe that it is still valid today, and the decision saying otherwise is invalid. The majority were ultra vires, because they didn’t determine in good faith that the constitution has always required same-sex marriage, they simply decided to defy the constitution because they could. At any rate, Davis is entitled to take that position and to stick to it, and no court has the authority to compel her to take an action which she does not believe her office requires her to take.
My suggestion – she should have “interpreted” the judge’s order the same way the Supreme Court “interprets” the Constitution – i.e. she should say “I interpret the judge’s order to say that I may not issue marriage licences to same sex couples.” It may sound like a flippant suggestion but I’m totally serious. I assume Davis took an oath to support the US Constitution – she did not take an oath to support the courts’ usurpations of the Constitution. Going back to the early days of our republic, supreme court decisions were not treated as definitive or as commandments to be obeyed. We have made the Supreme Court, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “a despotic branch” – look it up! On what grounds could anyone object to a clerk “interpreting” the judicial order to mean exactly opposite of what it means, when we give judges license to do the very same thing with the constitution and our written laws?
Great idea. She could say that in carefully reviewing the judge’s order she discerned in “the penumbra of the text” an intent that she not issue licenses for SSM.
For that matter, lower court judges should do the same thing – “interpret” the SC the same way the SC “interprets” the Constitution to reverse its meaning – then watch the left howl in indignation that “words have meaning.” We need a legal “95 theses” moment in this country!
It’s always so refreshing for “social conservatives” to come out of the closet and act exactly like hardcore leftists when their sacred ox is gored.
For all their wailing and claims or moral superiority, they’re just as base, law hating, and dictatorial as Dan Savage when they don’t get their way.
“Social conservatives” versus leftists is the same as fascists versus communists: There is no difference; only who is in charge.
I’m an all-purpose Conservative, which includes social conservative.
And you’re full of…um…raspberries. (I’m trying, Prof.!)
Right, millions of illegals, the liberal President, and the leading Democrat POTUS candidate in flagrant violation of the law and you try to equate that to an act of disobedience by a single obscure social conservative clerk.
beaucoup dinky dau progressives
And to ensure that our state of fraternal bliss is not needlessly disturbed, may I note that this and the proceeding posts are directed at tphillip
🙂
Totally agree with you tphillip.
The extremes from the Left and the Right are distorting the country like spoiled brats pulling at a Stretch Armstrong doll.
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Abigail Adams: “You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide on the validity of the [sedition] law. But nothing in the Constitution has given them a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them. Both magistrates are equally independent in the sphere of action assigned to them. The judges, believing the law constitutional, had a right to pass a sentence of fine and imprisonment, because that power was placed in their hands by the Constitution. But the Executive, believing the law to be unconstitutional, was bound to remit the execution of it; because that power has been confided to him by the Constitution. That instrument meant that its co-ordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional, and what are not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature & Executive also, in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”
Same logic applies all the way down the line – anyone who takes an oath to support the constitution takes that oath to support a written document which has objective meaning; he does not take an oath to support flagrant judicial perversions of said document. Nor can he legitimately take the totalitarian way out, “I was just following orders.”
How come Obama, Clinton, and millions of illegals get to flagrantly violate the law and get lauded for doing that but Davis is supposed to tuck her tail, whimper, and obey before the mighty coercive power of government? I wish a few thousand more clerks had the grit to stand up to the state.
The country is not going to fall apart because a few homosexuals have to drive to another county to get a license.
1) She is a “state” employee not a “federal” employee thus, subject to state law in the execution of her duties. Not federal law.
2) Just as a muslim has the right head garb to express their religious beliefs so should she be respected.
3) Kentucky state law bars gay marriage. She is following the law of the state.
Exactly. Adler writes: “…she does not have a right to her job as county clerk. The latter obligates her to follow federal law.” Bull. I cite the 9th and 10th Amendments.
Also, what federal law?
Current federal law on the matter states: “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word “marriage” means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word “spouse” refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” 1 US Code paragraph 7 – Definition of “marriage” and “spouse”.
There is no federal law recognizing same sex “marriage”, never has been.
Current federal law on the matter states:
Not according to the judicial branch it doesn’t. The judicial branch has decided that law is invalid and no longer exists.
Actually she does have a right to her job as county clerk. The voters gave her that right, whether she obeys the law (as the courts see it) or not.
If so, why is she refusing to issue marriage licenses at all?
Except that 1) federal law overrides state law. And 2) the federal constitution overrides state law. The courts claim to believe that the federal constitution requires same-sex marriage. (I say “claim to believe”, because I don’t believe they actually do believe this at all; I think they know very well that it doesn’t, and are lying through their teeth.) So in the court’s view the state law she is enforcing is invalid. My point here is that she is not required to agree with that view.
Except that 1) federal law overrides state law.
Except when it comes to drugs or immigration, apparently.
All she has to do is to employ the tactics used to deny gun permits. Make them demonstrate they have a good reason to be married. Then she can decide who gets a license based on whatever personal whims she may have.
The constitution specifically prohibits the government from infringing on the inalienable right to keep and bear arms. There is a difference.
She is an elected democrat ergo laws are not applicable to her. Obama and his DOJ, and the Clintons are prime examples.
I actually want to agree that there’s a difference between what someone acting on behalf of the government can be required to do, as contrasted with what a private citizen can be forced to do… but the courts have made it clear that even private citizens are not allowed to decline to promote gay weddings.
Since the only options people who do not want to endorse gay marriage appear to be “submit or die”, it’s hard for me to say that she’s doing anything wrong.
Which courts have made that clear?
Did you know she is a Democrat?
Notice that Davis’s party affiliation is often omitted from news stories. Like many of the counties in Eastern Kentucky, in Democrats still rule, especially at the local level. S why aren’t Democrat candidates being asked about Davis’s actions?
“Her official position obligates her to take part in the state’s licensing and recognition of marriages.”
Clerk Kim Davis is not obligated to issue same-sex licenses no matter her title. No one is obligated to do what a government entity demands just because it demands it. The clerk can disobey the law because her conscience says “No, to same-sex marriage.” The government may take action. So be it.
More importantly, how do we get laws rectified these days? Certainly, immoral laws are not being changed through Congress or though SCOTUS or the Executive branch.
Do we continue to support Planned Parenthood because government says it must take money out of your personal taxed income to support abortion? At what point do the good people get fed up and rebel against this government? After a trillion aborted babies? After a nation’s culture is destroyed by homosexuality? What does it take for good people to act?
Perhaps Clerk Kim Davis should register her personal beliefs as intellectual property and her actions as copyrights.
Or, maybe she should say the Constitution’s commerce clause allows her to tax (levy)(mandate) a homosexual couple billions of dollars to process their licenses.
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life….” Excerpt of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s speech at Harvard, June of 1978, “A World Split Apart”
~~~
Alexis de Tocqueville’s (1805 – 1859) prescient warning about soft despotism accurately depicts the political will of our three branches of government including the infamous 2015 SCOTUS. And, it certainly applies to all the over-reaching regulatory agencies armed with the tentacles of the politically motivated unelected. Here is de Tocqueville’s warning:
“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
(See Bernie the socialist’s post above for live updates)
http://kingdomventurers.com/2015/07/03/happy-fourth-of-july-dependence-day/
There is no difference at all between economic socialism and moral socialism other than the directives. Both ideologies require absolute centralized government control. Both require a dehumanizing of individuals down to the lowest common denominator of God-less materialism. Both require a faith in nothing other than government and social science, whatever that is.
The U.S. government, engorged with EU envy, is quickly becoming the conduit for social Darwinism. You know-the struggle for survival (aka happiness w/o pain) against “nature red in tooth and claw”. This means that government must decide who wins and who loses, who lives and who dies. Nihilism or nothingness in material form becomes the value the U.S. government, like the EU, imparts.
Putting aside meritocracy, to be socially and economically equal by applying the “equal” tourniquet to anything and everything beyond “all men are created equal” drains life of value. Once that happens you become nothing of value or lifeless. And you must not own anything of ‘unapproved’ value. Under such enforced mediocrity life becomes an equality of nothingness.
~~~
Justice Kennedy and the other liberal SCOTUS justices should observe this clerk to gain insight into what “dignity” truly is. Dignity is God-derived value, not a swishy social contrivance to satisfy your peers.
Ready to go to jail….
“I’m very steadfast in what I believe. I don’t leave my conscience and my Christian soul out in my vehicle and come in here and pretend to be something I’m not. It’s easy to talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” – Kim Davis, clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky
Exactly!
Dissenting opinions: Justice Antonin Scalia called the homosexual “marriage” ruling a “threat to American democracy.” Chief Justice Roberts described the legal reasoning of the opinion as having “nothing to do with” the constitution.
“Justice Clarence Thomas was among the four justices who dissented Friday against granting same-sex couples the right to marry, warning that the “decision will have inestimable consequences for our Constitution and our society.”
Thomas’ dissent focused on the idea of negative rights, “As one later commentator observed, ‘[L]iberty in the eighteenth century was thought of much more in relation to ‘negative liberty’; that is, freedom from, not freedom to, freedom from a number of social and political evils, including arbitrary government power,’” writes Justice Thomas in dissent.
Thomas connects this to disprove the notion that same-sex couples have a right to a government entitlement, writing, “In the American legal tradition, liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement.””
“Clarence Thomas On Gay Marriage: ‘The Government Cannot Bestow Dignity’”
http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/26/clarence-thomas-on-gay-marriage-the-government-cannot-bestow-dignity/#ixzz3klcUI8M4
http://kingdomventurers.com/2015/06/27/scotus-goes-dumpster-diving-and-comes-up-with-tossed-dignity/
Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane 6 Sept. 1819
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 18, The Founder’s Constitution
“The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist, and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.” Thomas Jefferson
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_18s16.html
SCOTUS’ Judicial Reviews-A Wax Museum
http://kingdomventurers.com/2015/09/04/httpillinoisconservative-comt-sup-court-html
Her Christain beliefs are nowhere to be found in the Constitution.
And she swore by her God when she took her Oath of Office to uphold the LAW as it was associated with her job.
If she has issues with the law now in place she should resign. And not be a petulant religious jerk about it.
Are you aware of American history or have you only read Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn?
You are freely stating an opinion. Where the heck do you think that freedom was formed out of? Christianity and its “free will” component formed free speech.
Your opinion would not survive an edit by socialism and communism or Progressive Political Correctness, to be sure.
“MLK 50 Years Ago: A Just Law Is a Man-Made Law That Squares With the Law of God”:
“One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” wrote King. “The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/mlk-50-years-ago-just-law-man-made-law-squares-law-god
Christian frau, sign ze paper! Bring on ze lions!
Some of you folks make me wonder. And Carly, I just lost a lot of respect for you. An evil law is not a law. An evil court decision is … evil.
So, remove her from office, all of you who don’t want us Christians in public office, who don’t want us running hospitals, baking wedding cakes, photographing, or participating in the economy.
It’s 1940 and Christians are the new Jews. Welcome to Amerika! Sieg heil!
I’m not enough of a legal expert to know where things wort out, but as an elected official, if she ran on a platform of only supporting traditional marriage, then she is would be performing the duties she is elected to do.
That is the nature of an elected mandate.
I really wish there was an edit feature!
I’m not enough of a legal expert to know where things will eventually sort out, but as an elected official, if she ran on a platform of only supporting traditional marriage, then she
iswould be performing the duties she is elected to do.That is the nature of an elected mandate.
While Hillary is still a candidate I would like to hear her being asked what she thinks about a fellow democrat denying a marriage license to a same sex couple. This does not fit the narrative. Forget the favorite bible verse question.
Here we go again — this what I mean. Get off Davis case until the libs start enforcing the law on their own operators. This stuff is breaking the Social Contract. Either the law gets enforced for everyone or we have no rule of law. Get it?
——————————————————–
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission requesting that it investigate the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for having “knowingly hired” an illegal alien, Cindy Nava, to help craft the committee’s 2016 political message and communications. Judicial Watch filed its complaint on August 25, 2015.
A June 8, 2015, story in The Washington Post reported that the DNC hired Nava with full knowledge of what DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) termed Nava’s “undocumented status.” The news report details that “Despite not yet attaining legal status, Nava is working for the Democratic National Committee as one of a crop of fellows from around the country helping the party organize ahead of a presidential election that President Obama predicted would feature immigration as a major issue.” The Spanish language newspaper El Nuevo Herald reports that Nava would help coordinate DNC outreach to “women, youth, and Hispanics.”
Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from participating “directly or indirectly in the decision-making process” of federal, state, or local election-related activities.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-fec-must-investigate-democratic-national-committee-for-employing-illegal-alien-to-craft-2016-political-message/
The Supreme Court has ruled that pro-choice or selective doctrine is the law of the land. Under their “equal”, or rather congruence, ruling they selectively discriminated against orientations and behaviors.
It seems that the clerk has obeyed the letter and spirit of the “law”, but chose to restore principled inclusion. The Supreme Court has yet to explain the basis of ruling for selective exclusion, other than the State-established pro-choice cult, that has promoted a violation of human and civil rights.
“Do first amendment rights allow government employees the opportunity to cherry pick the laws they dispense?”
I’m tired of hearing the term “cherry pick” in reference to this matter. This is not a “cherry pick,” it’s an exceptional issue with profound moral implication. Pointing out that the woman is compelled against her conscience because she’s a “government employee” distorts and trivializes the issue.
You gotta be careful with these Christian types. Let one of them get away with defying the state, and before you know it, there’ll be hundreds, and then thousands. It’s like those incorrigible Sisters who defy the Dear Leader’s birth-control mandate. Let Christians get uppity, and soon they’ll be putting Nativity scenes all over the place, and even running charitable groups without 501(c)(3) approval! These ladies must be made to sign ze papers, or it’s the end of orderly society as we know it.
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . .
Walkin’ in, singin’ a bar of “Alice’s Restaurant” and walkin’ out? Friends,
They may think it’s a MOVEMENT
Since when is there a “government employee” exception to the 1st Amendment? Fiorina just made it up, and this article thinks its an actual thing. Absolute nonsense.
Here’s how this works: We all have a 1st Amendment Right guaranteeing freedom of conscience. The federal government, and all other levels of government, are prohibited from forcing us to violate our beliefs – including, specifically (based on SCOTUS rulings) that the government cannot force you to choose between your occupation and your faith.
That’s why doctor’s can’t be forced to perform abortions if they have a religious objection (same with nurses or anyone else working in a hospital). <— there are no exceptions to that.
That's why muslim grocery clerks can't be forced to handle alcohol or pork products even though the store they work in sells them regularly.
Very, very sad that even on a supposedly Conservative blog you still see articles by people who are absolutely clueless on the 1st Amendment and the SCOTUS rulings supporting the "conscience clause".
It’s not a “government employee” exception, it’s a “government” exception. The government has no religious beliefs. It’s not allowed to have any. Therefore anyone who is acting for it must carry out their official duties without regard to whatever religious beliefs they may privately hold, just as a Hobby Lobby employee, while acting for his employer, must carry out his duties in a manner that reflects his employer’s Xian beliefs, not his own beliefs, whatever they might be.
But there’s an important distinction between a religious belief and a belief about right and wrong that is derived from a person’s religious beliefs. If a public official believes that robbing banks is wrong, it doesn’t matter why he believes that. If the reason he believes it is because the Bible says so, that doesn’t invalidate the belief, and he is just as entitled to act on it as he would be if he’d come to that conclusion for a secular reason.
False compartmentalizations required by Fiorina and the rest. Davis is right on this issue, as very Christian worthy of the name knows: we are enjoined to obey the government as long as it does not ask us to disobey the Word. Then, we resist. That is our duty, our obligation, no matter how many hats we wear. We don’t resign. We stand firm.
Fioriana’s response was unfortunate, and telling.
I agree. Fiorina did not respond with moral courage in support of the clerk’s moral courage. Fiorina, like many others, just made a sterilized ‘politically correct’ assessment.
That’s irrelevant. Her religion may require her to resist, but the law doesn’t recognize such a requirement. The law requires her to obey it, regardless of what her religion may say.
Would Fiorina’s wimpy submission on this be an example of Legal Submission? It certainly doesn’t sound like “Insurrection”.
Are there no Natural Rights in 2015?
~~~That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed~~~
Does not consenting meekly to such governmental decrees grant it false legitimacy?
Almost certainly Davis as one person resisting will, over time, be overwhelmed by the power of the state. But why should conservatives not applaud her resistance rather than joining the ranks of the oppressors, insisting she cease her actions and submit? If the left routinely refuses to enforce the law against its own operatives, what are ostensible conservatives doing demanding our own resistors toe the line?
Note — Fiorina may be no worse than other candidates on this but this article is about her.
It is one thing for a cab driver to refuse to drive a woman to an abortion “clinic” to have her baby killed and it is another to block the entrance to the “clinic” parking lot. Davis is doing something like the latter. She is refusing to do her job as an elected official rather than resign her position. The laws of Kentucky must give some kind of recourse for citizens when elected officials refuse to do their jobs. Technically, this is not a federal case. Davis’s motives are to obstruct an unconstitutional Supreme Court decision but her act is to refuse to do her duty as an official of the state to issue marriage licenses to anyone. How does this belong in a federal court?
Should she do this? I do not see a religious freedom issue here at all since she has an option to resign. Is her action effective in promoting authentic marriage? I don’t think so. Is her action effective in protecting the religious liberty of those whose liberty is truly being compromised? Well, no, it is not. Do her actions materially obstruct the implementation of a lawless Supreme Court decision? I see little prospect for a significant number of state and local officials to join her in some common act of resistance that would preserve our liberties against the court.
The Kentucky law clerk is just as wrong in her refusal to enforce the law, as the mayors of sanctuary cities are in not enforcing immigration law.
Frame it that way and you understand why we need rule of law. And how to nail the Democrats for their own violations thereof…
In other words, let the liberals do whatever they want while offering a few ineffective words of protest from time to time but make dang sure social conservatives are bludgeoned into submission if they dare to cross the line.
I agree with you in principle, but this is not working out in reality. Sanctuary cities represent massive lawbreaking by the government, open, flagrant, beginning in 1979 in Los Angeles. That’s over 30 years with no real end in sight. But let one clerk in Kentucky defy new SSM rules and the government, media, and political apparatus mobilizes immediately to crush impertinent opposition.
Add to that a litany of lawbreaking from Executive Amnesty to Clinton’s email maladies to DNC endorsed BLM openly calling for the death of police who enforce the law.
On the other hand we have moderates demanding full and immediate compliance and condemning those who stand up and show any resistance.
Let’s take this matter to its logical conclusion: What happens when the ‘Supreme’ Court decides to unilaterally ‘legalize’ polygamy – which historically leads to enforced child marriage (and welfare abuse due to lack of means testing for marriage) – in recognition of the religious ‘rights’ of Muslims? Perhaps its ‘ruling’ will be a simple ceding of United States’ laws via a sweeping recognition of treaty laws giving Sharia Courts the ‘right’ to operate here. Does the state clerk have the DUTY to refuse a marriage license when 50 year old Mohammed applies for a marriage license to ‘marry’ 6 year old Aisha? Or, will all of the government clerks be godless by then because real Christians were forced to resign and live in penury?!
Remember: Sharia Law fully recognizes ‘temporary’ marriages which effectively ‘legalize’ child prostitution….
So let’s see. If a government employee decided guns were immoral and absolutely, positively refused to issue a permit to someone, even after being expressly ordered to by court, everyone here supporting this clerks expressing her beliefs would similarly support that other employee as well?
She. Has. No. Right to do this. She can simply quit her job if she disagrees with the law that she has sworn an oath to carry out. Whatever your personal opinions on gay marriage are, you cannot choose ti refuse to carry out your duties as a government employee.
You wouldn’t support it if she was denying gun permits and you shouldn’t support her now.
The SCOTUS ruled that states can’t discriminate as to whom they give marriage licenses to (which isn’t really under their purview). They didn’t rule that county clerks had to issue marriage licenses as part of their job. The county clerk isn’t issuing any marriage licenses, she isn’t discriminating against anybody.
No, because she’s not issuing licenses at all, which means she’s discriminating against everybody.
Um, “discriminting against everybody”?! That’s a contradiction in terms. It’s literally impossible.
I’m just tickled that a bunch of progressives are just now getting butthurt about the inability to fire a government employee.
“Gay marriage will not harm anyone” they said.
“It won’t affect anyone that doesn’t want one” they said.
Doesn’t the paperwork in Kentucky she is obligated to fill out for a marriage license state one man and one woman?
”…even after being expressly ordered to by court….”
The above statement IS the problem.
The irreligious and unelected (and possibly blackmailed in this or other cases) federal Supreme Court overreached by ILLEGALLY attempting to REDEFINE each state definition of marriage in direct opposition to the legally expressed political will of the people – both over time and in the present.
The Supreme Court did NOT hear from passionate and well prepared lawyers nor consider evidence from subject matter experts and concerned parties (including citizens) regarding the societal impact of homosexual (and the polygamous and child marriage that are already attempting to piggyback the ‘order’) – but rather heard poorly constructed arguments and poorly presented evidence from whatever lawyers drew the short straw to argue before the court in that particular self-interested case.
The federal Supreme Court illegally overthrew the state legislatures against the will of the people (and God!).
Interesting how some people inevitably include the word “unelected” in their description of Supreme Court justices whenever those jurist rule in a way they don’t like. Well, the founding fathers, whose wisdom is absolutely revered as accurate and absolute in all matters of government architecture, set it up that way. Go ahead and look at the Constituion, it is right in there.
Actually, not so much, ace. The John Marshall court sort of made a lot of it…like Topsy in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”…just “grow’d that way”.
What the Framers DID do is provide for changing the entire judiciary, just like other changes, via a deliberate, republican system. Which we may be roaring up to.
They also provided fairly considerable Congressional room to regulate the judiciary.
If God doesn’t like it, he can snap his invisible fingers and change it.
And in fact, if God didn’t LOVE homosexuals, he would have altered Adam and Eve’s DNA, and not let woman birth them for 10,000 years.
The judge ordered her jailed:
“ASHLAND, Ky. — A federal judge here on Thursday ordered a Kentucky clerk jailed for contempt of court because of her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/us/kim-davis-same-sex-marriage.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-1&action=click&contentCollection=U.S.®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article
Now, if only the Federal courts would jail officials who refuse to issue gun permits.
Right? Right…???
Hear, hear! Fortunately I live in a “Must issue” state and have never had any trouble but I did wonder how I would feel if the Clerk of the Probate Court (that’s where it’s done in Georgia) refused to issue my permit.
Absolutely right!
There should be NO restrictions at all on gun ownership! Or on the kinds of guns citizens own. Anyone who wants them, should be allowed to have them:
If my neighbor believes his safety depends on automatic weapons, he should have them. If he thinks he needs bazookas too, that should be his prerogative. And that goes for his teen-aged kids, including the one suspended for throwing rocks through the library window. And for his gardener too, the one who looks like Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade: if he has the coordination to use hedge trimmers, his constitutional rights must be protected!
I’m against limiting the access to guns in any way — and yes, that includes requiring vision tests. Your blind grandfather can rely on his hearing to aim and shoot at intruders — even if his hearing aid battery is dead.
And the number of weapons a person can own should be unlimited. The Constitution clearly states a well regulated Militia entitles citizens to bear arms: it doesn’t restrict ‘militia’ membership by number: a militia of one is perfectly legitimate.
Isn’t it funny how toddlers basically let you know when they need a nap, just by the fraught and frenzied way they start carrying on when they’re this over-tired?
Amy, it’s only noon here in California, and not nap-time yet; but afternoon cocktails are on the horizon.
it doesn’t restrict ‘militia’ membership by number: a militia of one is perfectly legitimate.
That, in reference to the 2nd Amendment, is comparable to saying that Democrats are not allowed to hold office at the federal level because the Consititution guarantees a Republican form of government.
The Constitution clearly states a well regulated Militia entitles citizens to bear arms:
No, it doesn’t. And you know it. Liar.
Now now Milhouse, name calling from distance? Tsk tsk tsk.
I did paraphrase the 2nd Amandment, but you must know I was making a facetious case for a end Militia of one heavily armed person
Sorry.for the ‘end’ typo ..
So far today two rational decisions from the courts: the NFL chastised for it’s disregard of proper legal procedure and Brady allowed to compete; and Davis incarcerated for contempt of the law based on ancient religious biblical references.
BTW, are any Gays working at the Kentucky office? Statistics say there has to be at least one. Think we’ll see a hostile work environment suit in the future?
Really? A single-digit population just HAS to be represented in that office?
Wow. You fail at any form of rational application, huh?
Can’t read. Can’t count. Can’t multiply. What in the world CAN you do?
Bust your balls.
BWAAAAAAAHAHAHA.
In you WILDEST dreams…!!!
ON acid. With mushrooms…!!!!
But I love to have you here. I need a toy.
We finally agree on something — tho I see you more like a punching bag.
A possible gay employee wasn’t my idea; I got it from here:
http://m.snopes.com/kim-davis-married-four-times/
“Chat outside the courthouse among the protesters says that Ms. Davis, the County Clerk, is on her fourth marriage, though nobody thinks that diminishes her faith. Her mother held the post for some years; her son serves as her assistant. That’s not mean, angry conversation. It’s a headshake from people who know her and are sorry it has come to this. (The same chat says at least one employee is gay, and so the county may be looking at a hostile work environment.)”
Liar! That’s why you EXPRESSLY said, “Statistics say there has to be at least one.”
You think you can get away with that with me?
PLUS, it isn’t a “hostile work environment” if SOME RUMORED gay employee is happy there. Is it, liar?
You are HI-LARRY-OUS…!!!
The earliest mention of Davis’ marital status we turned up was a now-deleted 5 July 2015 Daily Kos diary entry titled “A view from Rowan County, KY.” When or why that post was removed is not clear, but a cached version of it included the following statement:
Chat outside the courthouse among the protesters says that Ms. Davis, the County Clerk, is on her fourth marriage, though nobody thinks that diminishes her faith. Her mother held the post for some years; her son serves as her assistant. That’s not mean, angry conversation. It’s a headshake from people who know her and are sorry it has come to this. (The same chat says at least one employee is gay, and so the county may be looking at a hostile work environment.)
So, it wasn’t JUST a rumor. It was a KOS-sack (o’shit) rumor that is NOW gone down the crapper.
You never fail to disappoint.
I don’t get what your problem is with the retrieved KOS entry.
I was just raising the same hypothetical they did. Or didn’t you notice my question mark (?) at the end of it????
Also why doubt the ‘chat’ statement about at least one employee being gay, when the rest of what was quoted seems accurate? Ms Davis IS on her fourth marriage -to 3 different men. Her mother DID have the post before her – she served as her mom’s deputy for decades. And her son DOES serve as her assistant – he was in court today in front of the judge with her. (Is nepotism prohibited by her religion?)
You should ask Hellary about compounding a lie, hunny.
Heh!!!
As usual when confounded you avoid answering the specifics, and dance away.
Oh, hunny, people can read! They can see you lying here!
You’re so funny! Spinning like an earth auger!
The United States Constitution assigned federal and state governments DISTINCT areas of authority so that state legislatures could perform a check on federal tyranny.
Lacking the explicit constitutional authority to decide and enforce the definition of marriage, the federal Supreme Court is – and will show itself to be- the tyrant in this case.
Do you seriously contend that the Founding Fathers – or the citizens who empowered and then elected them – would have allowed the federal government to redefine marriage?
I’m not in favor of gay marriage (though not based on religious reasons).
And I don’t have an opinion on federal tyranny in this case. But it seems to me the same federal-state distinction you’re making was the one made by Alabama Governor George Wallace, when he blocked the two black students from registering as students at his state University. Wallace in fact made almost identical assertions in his July 4, 1964 speech. He called the forced integration “an act of tyranny” imposed by “black-robed despots who sit on the bench of the United States Supreme Court.”
And I agree with you that the Founding Fathers and citizens who elected them – would never have allowed the federal government to redefine marriage. But neither did they end slavery, or allow women to vote. We don’t live in their world – we live in ours. And if they were alive today, and had been shaped all their lives by the changes in culture, technology, science we live with, the constitution would certainly be different.
Bullshit! This is the “growing” constitution crap from the Collective.
What the Founders DID understand remarkably well was human nature.
They wrote the Constitution as a charter of a LIMITED government for human beings. They provided a means…actually more than one…for changing it in a DELIBERATE, republican way. NOT according to one unelected, unaccountable jurist’s OPINION.
I don’t know what you’re babbling about. I said if the founders were alive today and had to write a new constitution it likely would be different. New information and experience would dictate that:
“I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”
— Benjamin Franklin, 1787
“Gorsh, Hannah, I would leave out that part that allows slavery if I had to write it now.”
Babble, indeed! You WERE aware that the Constitution was ANOTHER experiment in governing the sovereign states, right, duffus? You are a laugh a minute!
“From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad.”
JJTrombone likes to lie. Lying by omission is still a lie.
Read the whole thing…
http://www.usconstitution.net/franklin.html
Might doesn’t make right. Laws cannot be changed at gunpoint.
It is the courts that have declared state marriage statutes unconstitutional and thus void until rewritten by state legislatures and approved by governors as with all other legislation. There is no non-voided state statute to apply here. The federal judge has no state marriage law to demand be applied.
What if our elected Sheriff were a practicing Muslim, and refused to arrest any men for domestic violence, because his God says men are allowed to beat their wives, and he will not violate his religious beliefs?
That is an interesting question. And poses quite a few more! Thank, Amy!
I don’t see how a court can order him to arrest anyone. Do you think it can? He has the discretion to carry out his job as he thinks right, and if the voters disagree they can replace him at the next election. Why he thinks it right is his business. Religious motivations are no less valid than any other motivations.
You are conflagrating issues and outcomes.
Mandatory racial integration is an entirely different issue that rests on entirely different legal theories and cases than homosexual (and polygamous and child) marriage.
The fact is that citizens living within many states VOTED and won to maintain the traditional state definitions of marriage AND many citizens elected Congressional representatives who VOTED and won to maintain the traditional federal definition of marriage.
In contrast, the Supreme Court directly contravened the will of the people in this matter – inserting itself as an illegal and inadequate substitute for both the state and federal legislatures. Ignoring precedent from virtually ALL past Western law and changing law for such an important subject deserves significant debate, and hearings of evidence, and citizen input that can NEVER be part of a specific legal case.
The other fact is that it is well documented that the ultimate goal for the anarchists behind legalizing homosexual marriage is the ultimate dissolution of the meaning of all marriage – in other words, to effectively have NO marriage at all. Allowing any sex, number, and age of people to ‘marry’ and ‘divorce’ at will in any configuration negates the institution of marriage as a societal tool for civilizational stability. In reality, it achieves the same effect as Muslim ‘temporary’ marriages that enable rich Muslims to ‘marry’ little girls for a day and then ‘divorce’ them – all for a payment to the girl’s family and the local imam.
Regarding Muslims, people should take the time to read and understand Sharia Law BEFORE commenting. For reasons that are obvious to all educated non-Muslims, the fealty of Muslims to Sharia Law should effectively preclude their citizenship and leadership in all non-Muslim countries. Indeed, it is well-documented that Muslims in the West frequently subvert Western laws in favor of implementing elements of the Sharia Law that worldwide (including Western) Muslims overwhelmingly support according to the Pew poll. In addition, via the IOC control of the United Nations, worldwide Muslims are busy using ‘treaties’ to negate hard won Western human and civil rights.
I think the word you want is “conflating.”
Jail? Time for the lions! Or better — give her a 230th-trimester abortion and put her parts to good use!
Sign ze paper! Sieg Heil!
So Cruz supports her … was just on Megyn.
They offered to have others give the licenses, but she refused because her name as clerk would be on it. But now that she’s in jail, I’m not sure what name will be on them, as others (iirc) are ordered to issue the licenses.
She seems able to perform her job if they can work around her name being on the licenses, and should be allowed to continue since she was elected by the people. It would seem that could accommodate her conscientious objection, and the office still functions fully.
Perhaps it would require a slight law change allowing an assistant’s name instead of hers as clerk. But that’s apparently what they plan to do when she is in jail, so maybe no change is really needed.
Or maybe she wasn’t agreeable to even that, idk. That county office will have to issue maybe five gay marriage licenses a year? But there is no room for her belief there?
Cruz, Jindal, and Huckabee have spoken out against this disgraceful action by the Federal Judge. Fiorina deserves a chance to revise and extend her wimpy assessment, since she spoke before the clerk was clapped in irons and dragged off to jail for inconveniencing homosexuals.
Any more weigh in?
She was hauled away for ignoring a direct legal order, and for forsaking her sworn oath of office, taken on a bible, to uphold the laws of the State and Federal Constitutions. She didn’t swear an oath TO her God; she swore her oath to follow the law.
She’s entitled to her beliefs. But not to abrogate her responsibilities under law.
The order was not legal. Show me which law authorizes a court to order an elected official to issue a license.
What specific laws were on the books following Brown vs Board Of Ed, specifying Blacks had to be allowed to register at state universities? Are you suggesting that Gov. Wallace had legal authority to block those two black men from registering at the his state university because no specific law said he had to?
This is the law she broke:
2014 Kentucky Revised Statutes
CHAPTER 522 – ABUSE OF PUBLIC OFFICE
522.030 Official misconduct in the second degree.
http://law.justia.com/codes/kentucky/2014/chapter-522/section-522.030
KENTUCKY: Official misconduct is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. A public servant is guilty of it when, “with intent to deprive another person of a benefit,” he or she refrains “from performing a duty imposed upon by law or clearly inherent in the nature” of his office or “violates any statute or lawfully adopted rule or regulation” relating to it.
How many government officials have been tossed in jail for refusing to enforce immigration laws in sanctuary cities?
I just read the Cruz transcript, and I found it appalling.
“For the first time we’re seeing a Christian woman thrown in jail for standing up for her faith.”
That’s so historically wrong it burns.
“And let me point out to all of the politicians, both Democrats and Republicans who are touting that if Miss Davis doesn’t want to follow this lawless judicial decree from the Supreme Court that she should resign her office. Where have those voices been? Calling for the mayor of San Francisco to resign who has declared San Francisco a sanctuary city.”
Which is ad hominem tu quoque. A fallacy, not a defense. (Which, of course, ALSO happens to be true. But two wrongs STILL don’t make a right.)
Apparently, T-rump agrees with the judge.
Legitimate laws at every level manifest the will of the people and the consent of the governed.
As 50 year old Mohammed said about his polygamous marriage to 6 year old Aisha, ‘Her silence is her consent.’
http://www.inthenameofallah.org/Silence%20is%20Consent.html
Answer the question: When the Supreme Court ‘legalizes’ child marriage (by ceding to international ‘treaties’) should Christian clerks face unlimited jail time for refusing to issue marriage licenses to 6 year old girls?
If the Supreme Court requires clerks to issue polygamous or child marriage licenses to enact Sharia Law, then the Supreme Court is, in fact, requiring Christians to practice Islam – just as the court now requiring police to attend Islamic religious services is requiring Christians to practice Islam.
In the same way, if the Supreme Court requires clerks to issue marriage licenses for homosexual ‘marriage,’ then the Supreme Court is, in fact, requiring Christians to practice a new state religion with new definitions, rewards, and punishments. By unilaterally redefining marriage, the Supreme Court literally installed its own judges as the unelected and unquestionable high priests and priestesses of its own new state religion!
P.S. Do you think that Davis was strip searched when she was put into jail? Do you think that the (presumably female) prison guards digitally violated her private spaces? If so, then the new state religion that includes old sodomy will sexually assault POLITICAL and religious prisoners as one of its new punishments. Gee, funny that in all wars (which all have a spiritual element), rape is used as a tool of degradation. If Davis was strip searched, then the judge literally arranged to (homo)sexually assault Davis to force her to change her POLITICAL and religious beliefs – to support homosexuality!
Homosexuals: ‘If you refuse to ‘marry’ us (or bake us a cake or take our photo), then we will gleefully (homo)sexually assault you by state proxy and forcefully take away your livelihood.’
What kind of country are WE giving consent to non-Christians to create and enforce?!
The most important issue for me is that we now apparently have a religious test in order to hold office in spite of the Constitutional prohibition.
No. That is silly.
What we have…or should have…is a system of laws, some of which we may take radical exception to on principled grounds.
If you can’t support the laws, you cannot expect to impose your conscience on the law and simply put yourself at defiance of a judge (or as here, SEVERAL judges), while ALSO expecting to maintain your office.
You would not expect a Quaker Sec. Of Defense to be allowed to maintain his or her office if they refused the duties of that office on principle.
I hope.
Hi Rags,
I’ll play. 🙂
The situation that you describe is exactly what the Supreme Court DID when it’s justices imposed their morality via illegal backdoor lawmaking on an UNWILLING populace – without legal precedent or popular support.
It is an Alinsky tactic to hold this clerk to a higher standard than the many other ‘agents’ of the court who rule via personal conscience (which is hugely flawed due to their human sinfulness and open rebellion against God and/or natural law) rather than law.
That’s your opinion, a part of which I share, but it’s also wrong in your conclusion.
You seem to think that you can out supreme the Supremes. You can’t.
It’ll take a lot of people you get to agree with you to make that change. Until that happens, you are kicking against the pricks. I think making the point that there’s only marriage (no modifiers) is great, and I make it constantly.
Many of the same-sex couples who unsuccessfully applied for marriage licenses in Rowan County before today were long time county residents, and more importantly, taxpayers. The Supreme Court has decided that same-sex marriage is now the law of the land. County clerks whose salaries are paid by tax dollars, have no right, nor business telling those who fund count operations to go to another county to obtain the marriage license which is part of the service that the county is supposed to provide. To deny this abrogates one of the bedrock contracts between government and citizen, namely that all citizens are guaranteed equal treatment under the law. This is one of the key concepts upon which the Republic is founded. You cannot treat me differently from someone else just because my desire to peacefully exercise my rights guaranteed by law conflict with your religious principles. Instead of sending gay couples to other counties, Kim Davis ought to have resigned if she felt she could not carry out the mandates explicitly required of her position.
The reason Davis is not resigning is that nobody else in their right mind would give a not very bright, easily manipulated, and by the way, unprincipled (see four marriages, two out of wedlock children) person like her an $80K/year with benefits job.
Oh, I dunno. Seems like a good Deemocrat candidate for higher office to me….
I’ll see you, and I’ll raise you: You seem to think that the Supremes can ‘outsupreme’ the will of the people, the consent of the governed, ample evidence of homosexual deviance and pedophilia, natural law, and the Word of God….
At various times in history (including ancient Greece, Biblical Middle East, ancient Persia – and all Muslim countries from the time of Mohammed to now), homosexuals have tried to ‘romanticize’ and ‘legalize’ and ‘enforce’ man-boy love, but such adult homosexuality is STILL pedophilia – and it STILL employs deception and violence upon young boys and teens and their families – and it STILL spiritually repulses the vast majority of people (which is why even notoriously morally corrupt Muslim countries STILL attempt to hide their vast incidence of homosexual pedophilia in the shadows whereas Muslims openly celebrate their heterosexual pedophilia). Scratch the surface of adult homosexuality, and you find a whole lot of spiritually and morally confused childhood sexual abuse victims trying to recreate a sexual situation where they feel powerful instead of powerless – and this requires boys!
So, if ‘legal’ homosexual pedophilia has been trying to gain a permanent foothold in civilized society since forever, why has it failed every time? Well, we are about to have a front row seat to see for ourselves….
But here’s a hint from past history: Because the LBGT movement is full of disturbed and disturbing people, the LBGT movement will overreach – and eventually cause a drastic counter reaction from people who withdraw their consent from the actions promoted – and now enforced – by the LBGT movement via Western courts.
In the common vernacular: It may take a while, but eventually the LBGT movement will gross everyone else out – and the will of the people WILL win over petty judicial tyranny.
To summarize, there are more of us than them.
Here are two related articles by Karl Denninger:
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=230624
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=230627
Let’s talk about taxes vis a vis homosexual marriage. Chief Justice John Marshall famously said, “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.”
LGBT anarchists have very intentionally and very cleverly used the tax code to attempt to destroy the traditional definition and institution of marriage.
Remember when LGBT anarchists claimed that their goal was fair treatment under the tax code and that civil unions would do the trick?
Well, the tax code favoring traditional marriage was meant to encourage civilizational stability provided by children raised in traditional marriage – children who would be less likely to fit the profile of those who might become victims of pedophilia.
But, let’s imagine for a moment that there were NO personal income taxes. A time like that DID exist in the United States. In that case, what argument could the LBGT movement have used to gain a foothold into the legal system requiring the redefinition of marriage? Now, remember that we are forced to pay taxes upon the threat of imprisonment at the point of a gun (well, except for IRS employees and Al Sharpton).
In any case, all homosexuals always had the right to marry a person of the opposite sex, whereas NO homosexuals had the right to marry a person of the same sex.
What homosexuals really want is the right to redefine traditional religious marriage based on everyone’s mandatory participation in the political tax code – and then the right to politically persecute people who believe in traditional religious marriage.
And thus, the personal income tax has effectively destroyed traditional marriage….
Let’s also carefully consider this pronouncement:
“The Supreme Court has decided that same-sex marriage is now the law of the land.”
There are SO many things wrong with this idea including:
1. Under the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court CANNOT make laws. The legislative body makes laws. The reason for this is because the Supreme Court CANNOT conduct the extensive fact finding and consensus building necessary to make laws while deciding a specific case with specific set of facts in a timely manner. Without the consent of the governed, a government is doomed to failure – often with spectacular violence at its end. Yes, governments try to rule without consent, but such things ALWAYS end badly.
2. Just out of curiousity, are you now arguing that every marriage must be a same-sex marriage? Wink.
3. The Founding Fathers intended each state to be its own separate experiment in governance so that citizens would have choices. The idea was that people could see which forms of state governance would be the most successful by comparing and contrasting states – rather than that all states and people within them would be ruled from afar under one coercive federal law imposed against the clear will of the people in the states.
“the Supreme Court CANNOT make laws”
But it can shape and define them, or toss them out as unconstitutional.
Which in essence ‘makes them’ operative.
Trump agrees with Carly. The law is the law.
Wait for the Trumpeteers to make a quick 180 on this one.
That settles it for me. No Trump. Maybe if he has Cruz or Walker on the ticket, but even then it’ll take a lot of Febreze … or brandy.
Or maybe widens his support among the wide margins of voters who widely (by 60% to 70% in today’s online polls nationally) who think the wide-eyed jerk, er clerk, should be impeached; same percentages for those who think jailing her was correct.
Google “poll Kentucky clerk gay marriage licenses” to find numerous voting links and results.
Again, to thwart the usual ‘liberal-progressive-commie-liarDemocrat’ insults, I’m not in favor of gay marriage; expanding the domestic partnership laws to include them was my recommendation . They would have been entitled to the same benefits as married heterosexuals, and then swore fealty or love or whatever to each other with their own Gayage Ceremony.
Hey Jay, Hitler could ‘take over’ Germany, too – with the full permission of ‘his’ courts, etc, I might add.
The U.S. Supreme Court has been and is confused that it is a legislature – and has also confused various minorities that this is the case.
Additionally, the current Supreme Court sits judges who actually argue that U.S. law should be fully subservient to international law – which is greatly influenced by the United Nations – which is controlled by the OIC – which advocates to rule the entire world via Sharia Law – which establishes Muslim men as THE favored legal class in ALL cases.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_of_Islamic_Cooperation
In the grand tradition of trangenderism, Islam views boys as girls – until boys grow a beard. Islam allows and encourages man-boy love as Muslims follow the example of their ideal man Mohammed who ‘liked’ little boys as much as little girls (especially his 6 year old ‘wife’ Aisha). See ‘The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan.’
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dancing_Boys_of_Afghanistan
Homosexual and heterosexual pedophilia are completely compatible with Sharia Law – and thus are hallmarks of Islamic cultures and societies.
Fortunately, Muslims have completely ‘legally’ eradicated ALL rape because Sharia Law requires FOUR Muslim men to testify being eyewitnesses to the actual rape in progress. Thus, NO Muslim sex slaves have ever been or will ever be raped according to Sharia Law.
And, Sharia Law ensconced in international law and ‘treaties’ is ‘law’ that our current Supreme Court might someday soon ‘decide’ to be ‘operative’ in the United States in addition to – or instead of – its ‘evolving’ U.S. Constitution.
Watch out what you wish for….
To everyone who argues against the actions of the clerk, I ask, what is YOUR moral line that cannot be crossed?
Again, should a clerk be imprisoned (and homosexually digitally raped in a prison strip search) for refusing to issue marriage licenses for polygamous and/or enforced child marriages? What about a Christian pastor for refusing to perform such ‘marriage’ ceremonies?
These situations are next up to bat – and sooner than you think – DUE to the improper illegal ‘precedent’ set by homosexual ‘marriage’….
Bingo, Egghead. What if they lower the age of consent? What if a 25-year-old guy wants to legally
rapemarry a 12-year-old? “The law is the law,” right?Remember the anti-establishment hippies of the 60’s – 70’s? Dissent was virtuous back then. Now they’re in charge, abortion and sodomy are “the law,” and dissenters are imprisoned.
You mean like Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his 13 year old cousin?
Was that illegal? He was a Southern Christain who knew the bible backwards and forward (he claimed) and respected the institution of marriage so much he had Christain weddings all seven times he was married.
Those hippies you mention, what was wrong with them anyway? All that liberal protesting of the sodomy laws – imagine getting upset about putting homosexuals in jail for engaging in disgusting sex in private! Of course the sodomy laws in some states included heterosexuals engaging in oral and anal sex too, but fortunately those responsible for enforcing that part of the sodomy laws were doing some of the same dirty deeds themselves, and turned a blind eye to those acts against nature.
And why were those Lefty bastards protesting the Misceganation Laws? Didn’t those commie atheists know the bible was filled with scripture condemning the intermixing of races? And can you believe those Liberal Democrats in JFK’s entourage clapping when Sammy Davis Jr and Mae Britt announced their marriage! No wonder the religious Southern Democrats at JFKs nominating convention Booed Negro Davis when he showed up that night!
Sodomy. Abortion. Interracial Marriage. Pot smoking. Contraception considered normal. Bra-less young woman out in public. George Carlin speaking dirty words on stage. Those progressive a-holes ruined this nation! And it’s amazing to me how much of rest of the developed world doesn’t doe t see it that way, and has adopted so much of that liberal hippy vileness!
Sorry about the thumbs down — I’m trying an iPad and was trying for the reply button.
I’ve read and reread your note and am still at a loss on your point. Seems you like to call out hypocrites who call themselves Christian, but don’t see the hypocrisy in the hippies who now wield the iron fist. I did catch your spiking the football on the “progress” you seem to appreciate. Good luck with your new progressive world. You might have second thoughts when they finally come for you.
It’s been clear to me for decades that there is no middle ground in this debate. The left will murder, steal, and sodomize with aplomb, and the only solution for us civilized folks is to fight it without compromise. Enjoy your utopia. You might not like what it devolves into, but you can’t see that yet.
Hi JerryB, Let’s take it one step further: What about a 25 year old Muslim man who comes into the local clerk’s office and requires marriage licenses to marry the FOUR 6 year old girls with him – which is fully allowed per Sharia Law? Oh, and then that same Muslim man goes straight to social services to apply for welfare and food stamps to support all of his new wives.
Many years ago, I read one comment that talked about how some male international students have been bringing underage ‘wives’ – literal children – to live with them in the West in married student housing. Sometimes others will assume that these girls are their children, but the girls are their wives!
In England, Muslim ‘grooming’ rape and prostitution groups often threaten lower and middle class non-Muslim girls that the gangs will harm their families if the girls refuse to act as sex slaves.
In at least two countries, Egypt and India, where Muslims border Christians near Muslim countries, Muslim gangs kidnap non-Muslim girls into Muslim territory, forcibly convert and forcibly marry the non-Muslim girls, and then refuse to return the girls – saying that the girls have ‘chosen’ to be Muslim wives.
The ‘re-definition’ of Western marriage is going to open a whole can of worms – worms that already exist inside the can ready to wiggle right out….
You’re right on point, but the left will never admit it until it comes to fruition. I was also thinking of the eight-is-too-late NAMBLA types, where Bill and Dave give permission for their underage “son” to marry 25-year-old Bob. Could happen tomorrow.
Hey Jay, If all that you’ve got is examples about Jerry Lee Lewis (who was roundly condemned for his actions and virtually lost his career) and Sammy Davis, Jr. (who may have been booed at a political convention but had a long career), then you really need to get some better material.
All humans sin, and this leads to charges of hypocrisy for Christians who publicly advocate for morality. But, what is the alternative?
The ‘liberal hippy vileness’ to which you refer so proudly is sin.
The most recent abortion videos indicate that, to SELL whole babies and baby body parts to researchers, abortionists have been delivering LIVE babies over 5 months gestation (the older the better for researchers) and then violently murdering the babies (I think by stabbing their necks at the brain stem) outside the womb within five minutes of birth (very important to researchers and the reason that the babies must be murdered outside the womb) – all of which is currently illegal because such ‘abortion’ is INFANTICIDE for PROFIT – which creates a market for infanticide. See, sin – pure and simple sin. Vile, but way more than vile. Illegal, immoral, and sinful.
Yes, JerryB. Christian radio reports that Muslim men in Syria are now ‘adopting’ girls and then, as the girls’ fathers, giving themselves permission to ‘marry’ their own newly adopted daughters.
It is easy to see that homosexual pedophiles will use both surrogacy (baby buying) and adoption to gain control over helpless victims.
Part of the evidence that would be presented in any attempt to ‘legally’ implement homosexual marriage would be the high incidence of homosexual pedophilia – which is WHY homosexuals seek to make backdoor law via court cases which handily omit evidence that would give an accurate portrayal of the stated goals of homosexual organizations and statistical evidence of homosexual deviancy.
Christian radio says that, in one important legal case, the government literally refused to present arguments to defend heterosexual marriage (and thus argue the case against homosexual marriage). So, Christian groups offered to argue the case in place of the recalcitrant government – and were refused by the court.
I’m a Christian. I love God with all my heart and soul. But I think Ms. Davis is misguided and in the wrong.
To tell you the truth, it’s hard for me to understand how&why some people are homosexual, but even though I don’t understand it, I must treat them with love, respect, and equality.
Many anti-gay Christians claim that they’re standing up for what the Bible says. But if so, then don’t they have to be against divorce as well? (except in the case of sexual immorality…)
Would Ms. Davis stand up for Matthew 5:31-32?
31 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce. 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
How about 1 Corinthians 7:10-11?
10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.
Why don’t we hear a strong outcry for banning divorce from the same Christian crowd? (I am neither anti-gay nor anti-divorce, since I don’t believe in biblical inerrancy.)
What if a devout Catholic holds the same job as Ms. Davis and not only refuses to issue a divorce certificate but also instructs everyone else in his/her office not to issue it … would that be okay?
If I get my own way, strip clubs shouldn’t exist. Should I be able to not grant business licenses to those types of places, and also book stores that carry Playboy magazine and the likes, if I was a city/county clerk?
If she felt that she couldn’t in good conscience carry out her duties, the noble move would have been to give up 80k salary and resign.