It’s D-Day for misguided county clerk in Kentucky

The 18th century founding fathers of our great nation wisely recognized the value of keeping religious doctrine forever outside of the body politic. Thomas Jefferson, Constitution drafter and former president, eloquently elaborated on that important tenet: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

In 21st century America, however, such Jeffersonian logic is lost on Kim Davis, the controversial clerk of Rowan County, Ky. Davis has catapulted herself to the center of national controversy in recent weeks over the gaping hole she has gashed into that critically needed wall of separation.

Davis, a Democrat elected official in the county of about 23,000 people near the Ohio border, greeted the June 21 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the United States with reckless defiance. Instead of following the law of the land, she flouted it.

She said her deep and abiding faith prevents her from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. In response, a federal judge on Aug. 12 ordered her to drop her no-marriage-license policy, an order she refused to follow. As a fitting result, U.S. District Judge David Bunning earlier this month said he had no choice but to find Davis in contempt, and he ordered her jailed.

In the hoosegow she remained for about one week. She was freed last week after her deputies at the county clerk’s office agreed to follow the dictates of the highest court in the land –not the orders nested in their boss’s interpretation of the Bible.

WHAT TODAY HOLDS

Today rises as D-Day in the controversy. Davis is scheduled to return to work this morning. As she does, she has three simple options from which to choose: Follow the law, go directly back to jail or resign. We suggest she choose the latter.

Her attorneys, however, argue for a fourth option to protect Davis’ “sincerely held religious beliefs” by allowing other counties to issue Rowan County marriage licenses, or by removing her name from the licenses issued by deputy clerks in Rowan.

Neither of those options has merit. Forcing engaged couples to travel dozens of additional miles to make their union legal in the eyes of the state flies in the face of fairness and justice. Removing Davis’ name from the documents would stand as a convoluted yet serious abrogation of her elected duties as the county’s chief clerk of courts.

That accommodation also would set a most dangerous precedent. What if another clerk’s deeply held religious beliefs prevented him or her from issuing marriage licenses to biracial couples or even to men and women who had been divorced? In that case, the four-time married county clerk herself likely would feel the pain of prejudice.

SHE’S NO ROSA PARKS

The bottom line is and has been clear: Kim Davis is no martyr a la Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr., as some have ridiculously made her out to be.

She took an oath to uphold the civil laws of her county, state and nation and to protect the civil rights of all under her jurisdiction. She did not vow to uphold her own interpretations of biblical law. As a public servant, her sole allegiance must focus on upholding all laws, not just those laws that pass her personal faith-based test.

Her appalling snubbing of a Supreme Court ruling – albeit a controversial one for which she has won many allies – sets a poor example for her peers and underlings and makes her unfit to carry out all of the prescribed duties of her office.

If she insists on staying in office and fails to make a paradigm shift in her attitudes and actions toward same-sex couples in her county, then she has no other choice than to suffer the consequences through longer-term incarceration. Then the legislators and people of Rowan County can begin the search for a suitably fair and law-abiding replacement and rid Rowan County of the stain of inequity created by Davis’ misguided miscarriage of justice.