MOREHEAD, Ky. (AP) — The Rowan County clerk at the center of a conflict over same-sex marriage and religious conscience closed her office on Saturday ahead of a rally protesting her refusal to issue marriage licenses.
The protest comes a day after Kim Davis asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant her “asylum for her conscience.”
Davis stopped issuing all marriage licenses after the Supreme Court’s June ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. Four couples have sued, saying Davis must fulfill her duties as an elected official regardless of her personal belief that gay marriage is sinful.
A few dozen people showed up on Saturday to protest Davis’ ongoing refusal to issue marriage licenses. They included a couple who said they are a woman and transgender man who got their marriage license from Davis in February.
Protester Mary Hargis told the crowd Camryn and Lexie Colen had been reluctant to come forward but decided to do so to help the cause. The couple did not tell Davis that one of them was transgender when they went to request a license, Hargis said.
“She just saw a straight couple in love,” Camryn Colen told the crowd, picking up the story. “She should see everybody like that.”
The county clerk’s office regularly opens for a half day on the last Saturday of the month. A note on the door of the office did not explain the closure, but asked those who were inconvenienced to put their names on a list.
Morehead resident Sarah Lindsey had come to renew her car tags and said she was “really annoyed.”
“She’s supposed to have a service,” Lindsey said of Davis. “I pay taxes, a lot of them.”
“I can’t just decide to close my office. I would get fired.”
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Why does this woman still have a job?Why is she not in contempt and in jail?She’s collecting a tax payer funded salary and benefits while not fulfilling the duties of her office and her"religion"should have nothing to do with it!
It is important for Americans to see how fragile hard earned individual freedoms and civil rights are. The gains in gay civil rights should not be taken for granted.
Tyrannical religious fundamentalists and the Republican party are still attacking women’s health freedoms decades later. Let us remember that for over a century after the Civil War, conservatives, religious fundamentalists and racially prejudiced governments from both parties denied African Americans the right to vote and treated them as second-class citizens.
The message for further protests of this clerk is “Do your job!” The legality of LGBTQ marriage is established; further rallys that focus on LGBTQ rights are moot and separate the local LGBTQ from their larger community. Broaden the issue and its corresponding support that everyone is harmed by this willfully derelict clerk.
Davis better get nicer clothes and some work on her hair if she’s going to be Trump’s running mate.
She’s likeky giving 10 percent to her pusher/pastor. Or the lack of personal care is supposed to reflect her view of “female modesty”, I guess