Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage license certificates to gay couples, has been released from jail, but whether or not she will now issue marriage licenses to gays is not known. My guess is no because she is still a devout Christian who believes God’s law takes precedence over man’s law, and her Bible tells her that homosexuality, let alone homosexual marriage, is a sin.
She is to be admired for the courage of her convictions and staying true to her faith, but the fact of the matter is, in its 5 – 4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is now the law of the land. Therefore the state, which is charged with upholding the law, must abide by that Supreme Court decision, and since Mrs. Davis is an employee of the state, she is duty bound to abide by the law.
Of course, as I have written before, the Supreme Court had no business weighing in on gay marriage because the Founding Fathers ascribed to the individual states, not the national government, the responsibility for cultural, moral, values — i.e. societal — issues, of which gay versus traditional marriage is certainly one. And as it happens, before Obergefell, in Mrs. Davis’s home state of Kentucky gay marriage was illegal because the cultural, moral and values predisposition of the majority of Kentucky’s citizens believed it should be illegal.
Which brings up the second point. Cultural, moral, values, societal issues are political issues, not legal issues, meaning the people in each state, not the state or federal courts, should decide the issue through a ballot box initiative, a popular referendum, or even who they elect to their state legislatures to vote on the issue.
Finally, the reasoning the Supreme Court used to make gay marriage legal had no basis in the Constitution, which does not mention marriage, and since the traditional view of marriage goes back to Biblical times — meaning it predates our government, and courts, by two millennia — the court’s decision is an extreme overreach.
Still, it did decide and gay marriage is the law of the land, and, unfortunately, a Supreme Court decision based on the flimsiest of constitutional reasoning has the same force of law as one based on the soundest constitutional principles. Further, while Obergefell was a bare 5 – 4 majority, the fact is that 5 – 4 majorities have the same force of law as unanimous decisions.
So Kim Davis acted on her conviction that God’s law rises above man’s law, for which, her Bible tells her, she will be rewarded in Heaven. But here on Earth, it is man’s law, not God’s, that governments are charged with upholding.
