Clerk remains defiant
Judges now free to jail her
MOREHEAD, Ky. — A county clerk denied marriage licenses to gay couples again Tuesday, in defiance of the federal courts, and vowed not to resign, even under the pressure of steep fines or jail.
“It is not a light issue for me,” Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis said in a statement released through her lawyers. “It is a heaven- or- hell decision.”
April Miller and Karen Roberts were at the clerk’s office when the doors opened Tuesday morning, hours after the Supreme Court rejected the Davis’ last- ditch request for a delay.
Davis again turned them away. On their way out, Miller and Roberts passed David Ermold and David Moore, a couple who have been together for 17 years. “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 must 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.
In a brief but tense encounter between Davis and about two dozen demonstrators who crowded into her office, the clerk repeatedly refused to comply with the court order.
“Under whose authority are you not issuing marriage licenses?” someone in the crowd asked Davis.
“Under God’s authority,” she responded.
“I’m willing to face my consequences, and you all will face your consequences when it comes time for judgment,” she said. “Plain and simple.”
Davis later went into her inner office, closed the door and shut the blinds. The sheriff moved everyone outside, where demonstrators lined up to shout and sing at one another.
Davis knows that she faces stiff fines or even jail if the judge finds her in contempt, one of her lawyers said. But the couples’ lawyers asked that she not be sent to jail. They instead requested that she be fined because she currently collects her salary — $ 80,000 a year — while failing to per- form her duties. They asked the judge to “impose financial penalties sufficiently serious and increasingly onerous” to “compel her immediate compliance without delay.”
Bunning ordered Davis and her six deputy clerks to appear Thursday morning at the federal courthouse in Ashland.
Davis said she has received death threats since she began her protest against same- sex marriage.
“I was elected by the people to serve as the county clerk,” she said in the statement. “I intend to continue to serve the people of Rowan County, but I cannot violate my conscience.”
“I have no animosity toward anyone and harbor no ill will. To me, this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God’s word,” her statement said.
Davis served as her mother’s deputy for 27 years before she was elected as a Democrat to succeed her in November. Davis’ son is on the staff. As an elected official, she can be removed only if the state Legislature impeaches her.
Davis’ supporters blame Gov. Steve Beshear, who ordered resistant clerks to issue licenses or resign. The Kentucky County Clerks Association has proposed legislation to make marriage licensing a function of state government, relieving clerks of the burden.
Beshear said again Tuesday that the Supreme Court has settled the case and that he won’t call a special session to change a law that 117 of the state’s 120 county clerks are obeying.
Davis’ resistance has led to a number of legal skirmishes elsewhere. The ruling was implemented relatively smoothly at first but lately has encountered resistance, particularly in the South.
Two counties in Texas and about a dozen in Alabama are also refusing to issue marriage licenses to same- sex couples, according to gay- rights groups. In Mississippi, two same- sex couples are challenging a state law barring gay couples from adopting children. And in Florida, a couple has sued over a state agency’s refusal to name both of them as parents on their child’s birth certificate.