MARRIAGE: Kim Davis follows her conscience

Demonstrators show their support for Kim Davis outside the Rowan County Clerk’s Office in Morehead, Kentucky, September 14, 2015.

Johnston works in Carter County, just to the east of Rowan County, where clerk Kim Davis sparked a national furor by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

When Davis was behind bars, deputy clerks issued licenses.

According to pollsters, nearly one in two, or 45%, approved of the decision by a federal judge to send Davis to jail for not complying with his order to issue those licenses.

That’s different from giving licenses to people who have been divorced, she said.

The ACLU of Kentucky is representing four couples who are suing Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning held her in contempt and ordered her to jail.

Her strong Christian beliefs, she has said, prevent her from allowing her name to be affixed on a certificate “that authorizes marriage that conflicts with God’s definition of marriage“.

But Davis’ position as a government official has some of those same conservative leaders warning that she may not be the ideal figure to rally around. In Obergefell vs. Hodges, the court interpreted the Constitution to require states’ recognition of same-sex marriages. A judicial oversight committee is investigating him. In her absence, her deputies have issued at least seven licenses to gay couples. (Davis is an elected official.) Magistrates from nearby Rutherford County travel to McDowell to perform weddings, while the McDowell County magistrates drive to Rutherford to perform other duties in a sort of “swap”, WLOS-TV reported.

And it didn’t take long for people to point out that while many don’t believe in, or like, aspects of their jobs, they still do them.

Standing at the courthouse door, the Kentucky county clerk read from a handwritten statement and explained in a quivering voice that she had been faced with a “seemingly impossible choice” between following her conscience and losing her freedom. Dozens of television cameras crowded around his counter, some reporters in the back climbed step ladders to get a better shot of him sitting at his desk, waiting for a couple to arrive to get a marriage license.

Davis has made clear that her case is not unique. If this poll is any indication, they didn’t like what they saw.

Attorney Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, who is representing Davis, agreed.

The legitimacy of Davis’ refusal can not be contingent on the correctness of the underlying moral claim.

The Supreme Court found clearly and unequivocally that there is a constitutional right to marriage. Rather, what Davis is doing recalls those 1950s and ’60s southern governors, like Orval Faubus and George Wallace, who willfully defied the Supreme Court, federal civil rights laws and the enforcement orders of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. She also encouraged both sides to debate the issue without being disagreeable.

Planting Peace said they will leave the billboard up for a month. I’m just a person that’s been transformed by the grace of God, who wants to work, be with my family. I hate no one.