Both the lawyer representing Kentucky clerk Kim Davis and her husband said on Friday that despite being jailed for repeatedly refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, Davis will not resign and will remain in jail.
On Friday morning, Joe Davis (pictured above), Kim’s husband, held a sign outside the Rowan County Courthouse that read, “Welcome to Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“She won’t resign, I promise you,” he said, according to The Courier-Journal. “Until something gives, she’ll be there.”
Joe Davis said that he plans to travel to confront Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D), who has refused to call a special legislative session to address marriage licenses for gay couples, according to The Courier-Journal.
“You ain’t no governor because you have no backbone,” he said of Beshear.
He has also criticized U.S. District Judge David Bunning, who ordered Kim Davis to jail on Thursday.
“Bunning cannot bully me, my wife or my son,” Joe Davis said on Friday, according to Louisville television station WDRB. “I taught my son how to stand up for what’s right and what he believes in at any cost. Bunning doesn’t know how to pick on somebody that can handle him. The only thing he knows how to do is to pick up on the weak people.”
On Thursday, after his wife was sent to jail, Davis told a New York Times reporter, “Tell Judge Bunning … he’s a butt.”
In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday, Kim Davis’ lawyer, Mathew Staver, reiterated that the clerk still refuses to resign.
“She’s elected by the people and if the people want her to resign, then the people can ask her to resign, and they haven’t done that. In fact, she’s a very well-liked individual in that community,” he said.
He said that even though the deputy clerks in Rowan County have begun issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Davis will not back down.
“It doesn’t remedy the situation for Kim or anyone else because it still has Kim’s name on it,” Staver said, referring to marriage certificates.
“There’s lots of clerks in Kentucky that have the same conscience convictions, and they have one request — just remove our name from the official licenses,” Staver told ABC. “You can have the Commonwealth of Kentucky, that’s fine. They’ll record it, that’s fine. Just don’t affix their name and title to a marriage certificate that collides with their religious beliefs.”
Staver said that Davis “may be incarcerated behind jail bars, but her conscience remains free.”
Watch Staver’s interview, via ABC:
