Don’t Blame Jesus

By now you’ve all been following the jailing of Kim Davis, the four-times-married Kentucky county clerk who disapproves of same-sex marriage. At this point the story is the fallout. Davis’s shenanigans have pushed most of the GOP nomination contenders into declaring support for Davis.

The exceptions are Miz Lindsey Graham (like anybody cares) and Donald Trump. At this point I think Trump could announce he eats live puppies for breakfast and his poll numbers would go up five points. Jeb! managed to come down rather squishily on both sides of the issue. The rest of the field is in full-on Christian martyr mode.

I strongly suspect this is not something GOP insiders wanted to happen. I haven’t seen any polls on Ms. Davis, but polls taken in July showed that American adults tend to favor same-sex marriage, 54 to 39 percent, according to Pew. Being strongly anti-same-sex marriage isn’t going to help anyone win the general election.

BTW, Ms. Davis is in jail not only because she refused to issue marriage licenses herself (to anybody, I understand), but because she wouldn’t allow anyone in her office to issue them, either. She was offered a deal that would have allowed her to stay out of jail if she had stepped aside and let her clerks issue the licenses, and she refused.

So she’s in jail, and the clerks are issuing licenses, anyway. They don’t want to piss off the judge.  The judge can keep Davis in jail about as long as he likes, unless and until she agrees to comply with court orders. Heh.

The other development is that the crowd fundraising sites are refusing to allow Davis to use their services. That hasn’t stopped others from using Davis in their own fundraising pitches — Mike Huckabee and the homophobic National Organization for Marriage is working this hard. But Ms. Davis herself possibly won’t be picking up quick cash from donors. She had better hope she gets a decent book deal.

37 thoughts on “Don’t Blame Jesus

  1. I’m sure that Regency will be more than happy to publish this homophobes “Letters From A Kentucky Jail Cell.”

    It’ll be the greatest novel ever written by a victimized “Christian” “martyr!”

    Oh Jesus, if you’re really Our Savior, can’t you save the rest of us from your “Christians?”

  2. Her freedom to curtail the freedom of others has been taken away. Make no mistake: she does not want freedom for herself; she wants power for herself. To conservatives, the two are one; they are authoritarians to the core and the denial of one amounts to denial of the other.

  3. She seems to have some silly notion that her god will punish her for issueing the licenses to all couples equally, so she won’t issue them to anybody. I can’t see how that makes any sense, if she believes in marriage between a man and a women and she thinks that’s OK with her sky wizard then why not issue them to opposite sex couples only? Don’t the christian fundies believe marriage is the foundation of clean living (4-times married means 4 times more cleaner). Her lawyer has come up with a scheme that would allow same sex couples to get the license in her county if they remove her name from the official document? Two problems with that. First, I’m not sure the license would be official without the name of the authority having jurisdiction (that whole legal document thing). Second wouldn’t her sky-wizard still know that she’s collecting 80K a year issuing licenses to same sex couples? I’m not sure her and her “attorneys” thought this thing through? What if a fundie Mooslim man was in charge at the BMV and decided it was against his religion to give drivers licenses to the women folk, or worse not even let them through the door without a Burka. I wonder how Huckabuck et al. would reconcile his religious freedom?

  4. “Oh, to the Christian right, Kim Davis has become the new Rosa Parks”

    Right and Donald Trump is the new MLK, they seem to have lost their way?

  5. I’m willing to bet her face shows up on the cover of the in house mag Billy Graham ministries puts out. A shining example of a modern day martyr being persecuted by this Godless administration – So do your part and vote out this heathen Democrat party in the next election!

  6. Yea, married 4 times and thinks she’s fit to judge everyone else. Typical. And the Evangelical cretins supporting her haven’t even figured that out yet.

    A couple of thoughts: her lawyer says the same sex licenses that went out today would not be valid. Hard to see why that would be his concern, since that’s ultimately between the couples and the Government, which Davis was simply an arm of. The lawyer sounds likes he’s drifted out of his sphere of competence.

    Secondly, if Davis is receiving “donations”, as it sounds she is, as she is a sitting public official, I’d say that constitutes accepting graft, which is also illegal.

  7. First, there are none so adamant as reformed sinners.

    Second, one does not have to wonder hard or long to imagine Davis’s reaction if the clerk in the next county over issued marriage licenses to gay couples a year ago (when it was against the law) because the clerk felt her religion demanded it.

    We have the best part of 100,000,000 people in this country incapable of rational thought.

  8. As near as I can tell, to the right-wing mind, this is civil disobedience – by an agent of the state. She is taking a stand for the freedom to deny freedom, and liberty of oppression.

  9. The one person who pisses me off the most in all this is Ted Cruz. You’d think for a guy who has been running around carrying a pocket addition of the Constitution with him since he’s reached puberty that he’d understand better than anybody of how the Constitution was created.And that he’d understand that the United States of America could never have come into being had it not been for the religious people of that day agreeing that the only possibility for unity as a nation would be through a secular government.
    A government where all faiths were guaranteed protections from being set upon by more powerful and predominant faiths by the use of government. It’s a simple concept that with only a shallow understanding of the history of the church in the affairs and politics of governance in Europe and the colonies makes clear the necessity for a secular government.
    The churches and religious entities of the day when the Constitution was formed and ratified understood full well what they were agreeing to when they went along in adopting the Constitution.
    As the bible would put it, they’ve traded their birthright for a bowl of pottage, or a secular government, if that’s how they feel their religious liberties are being infringed upon.
    Cruz has to understand that concept if he’s holding himself out as some sort of Constitutional scholar.. I know he understands it. That’s why he’s such a scumbag. He’s egging on simple minded people with the idea that they are defending a liberty that they’ve never had and doesn’t belong to them. He’s preying on misguided but heartfelt beliefs. And he’s using Christianity to perpetuate his deceptions.
    Huckabee is just an asshole who is not smart enough to understand that he’s just a dupe like the rest of the crowd.

  10. I have been watching this with great amusement. Usually the far right, especially the evangelicals, are careful about maintaining a smoke screen. Usually, the fetus people make arguments in opposition to late, late abortions or object vehemently to practices that are already illegal. Seldom do they announce openly that they oppose most forms of contraception and the argument they have framed over ‘babies’ is actually about regulating the sexual behavior of other women (but not them).

    Here they have let the veil slip,no it’s fallen to the floor. On open display is the position that those same people who are desperately opposed to Sharia Law (or any mention or respect for the Koran) – those same people believe that whatever their interpretation of the Bible is.. trumps the US Supreme Court – not in their private lives or religious practice but in the public sector wherever they have the perceived power to impose their religion on others.

    Fairly often, a zealot will open the debate with a false flag, a deliberate overt lie. Here it is. “This is a CHRISTIAN country.” Out of this seemingly benign misstatement they try to elevate their religious opinions over the law. This is a secular democracy – from the earliest rulings of the first Supreme Court, no religion or religious beliefs have ascendancy over any other. Sharia Law has as much authority in jurisprudence as the New Testament – absolutely none.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-ip47WYWc

  11. This is the tactical value of having Trump in the GOP field. Imagine if he weren’t in it:

    None of the other candidates would have to actually say anything – it would just be generally assumed that they were on Kim Davis’s side. Meanwhile, the Chuck Todds and John Dickersons of the world would know that it would be uncivil of them to actually ask any GOPers what they think of the case, because that would put them in a tight spot and that’s no fair.

    They WOULD, however, ask Hillary Clinton, and after she patiently explained to them that the law is the law, they would be free to speculate (without any messy, unfair numbers) that her answer would hurt her with Real Heartland Americans. Then any member of their permanent stable of conservatives would get off a not-actually-funny “zinger” about how rich it is for a Clinton to be talking about the rule of law, and then they could all agree that Hillary’s Kim Davis answer was yet another gaffe by a hapless, flailing campaign.

    This is how it works when a Clinton is involved in anything, and this is exactly the real reason the GOP is horrified that Trump is in the race.

    cund – When the righties realize they’ve lost this one, they’ll switch over to “See? The Democrats are the REAL bigots!” mode. It won’t make any sense and will exist solely as a way to make themselves feel better about their bigotry, but then again that’s all conservatism has ever been.

  12. Not to create a panic or anything (because: we’re over a year from the election; telephone polls are pretty meaningless; and I’m not clear on how they weighted number of Republicans responding vs number of Democrats) BUT: http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=d950cadf-05ce-4148-a125-35c0cdab26c6

    The interesting take away is that less-well-known Democrats than Clinton (Biden, Sanders) fare about as well or a little better than she. Not surprisingly, Trump skews older, whiter, and “male-er”. I think, at this point, most of what people hear about the Dems consists of the Clinton email nonsense instead of the issues. When the Dems start debating, that should change.

  13. Hillary’s problem is that she’s not the greatest campaigner.

    And while I’m not her biggest fan, I think she’s far, far, far, superior to anyone the GOP is putting forth.

    You want outlandish, boorish, and bellicose bigotry?
    Then Trump’s your guy.

    You want Theocratic “Christian” conservative and bigoted lunacy?
    One of the other GOP candidates is your guy.
    Ok, maybe not Jeb(!) – but who knows.
    And Fiorina hasn’t yet shown herself as a “Christian” holy-warrior, like Booby J, Ted Cruz-ader, or pRICK Sanitarium – or at least not yet.

    I prefer smart, steady, thoughtful, focused, and resolute.
    And imo, that describes HRC.

    Her problem is that she’s a campaigner more in the mold of Dukakis, Gore and Kerry, instead of like her husband and BHO.

    But, of course, who could top those two as campaigners?

    I’m sure she’ll bring her hubby up to the front pretty soon, to give her some of his campaign magic!
    And I can’t see POTUS Obama not helping her out with some of his campaign magic.

    • IMO the Dems need to schedule more debates. Most of America knows absolutely nothing about Sanders and O’Malley, and Clinton is perpetually being framed as the deceitful bitch queen in mass media. They all need a chance to present themselves to the people directly and not through the media filters.

  14. Well, tomorrow when the jailer refuses to bring in poison snakes for her Sunday worship service she’s gonna have a legitimate claim about being denied her religious liberty.

  15. Her lawyer really gave the game away today (or was it yesterday?) – he said that none of the marriage licenses issued yesterday were valid, because they didn’t have her signature on it.

    She had previously tried to put a different spin on it by trying to say that she simply didn’t want to be party to a same-sex marriage. It’s wrong, un-American and stupid (because it could all be solved by her quitting), but at least to principle of “not on my watch” was comprehensible, and feints toward something at least somewhat logical.

    This new piece of stupid gives it away: Kim Davis just doesn’t want gay people getting married at all. She simply thinks she has more authority than the Supreme Court.

    I want to think this is more complex than it sounds, and on a human level it is — Kim Davis has given bottles of ice water to people protesting outside her office on hot afternoons, and more than a few of the people looking for same-sex marriage licenses say they voted for her — but this is the last straw.

  16. Miz Lindsay Graham? Yes, he’s wrong on foreign policy, wrong on Iraq, wrong on Iran but “Miz?” That’s downright cruel.

  17. To become a US citizen I studied the history and government of this country for my citizenship exams. I understood the Constitution was written so that religion and government would stay separated, that the government was neutral. To me it is very simple – she is an officer of the government, a “civil” servant, not a private citizen. She was appointed to deliver “civil” documents, not religious sacraments in a church, or synagogue or mosque, so her beliefs or lack thereof should not even be discussed – this is not a freedom of religion issue. By bringing her religious beliefs in a government office she imposes her Christian views to her civil duties, paid by tax payers. She is ignorant of the laws she is paid to support and a religious zealot. I am saddened that this country is giving such attention, in 2015, to a fanatic who is trying to pervert the laws of the land and illegally impose her religion in US Government. The media should let this go and stop giving coverage to an individual refusing to deliver civil contracts for which she is receiving a salary.

  18. I see Raphael and Huckabuck are going to the jail to meet miss (married 4 times) martyr today! Shouldn’t someone in the “liberal” media be asking those candidates that say the supreme court had no standing to rule on the marriage law why they are against the 2nd amendment? I mean the supreme’s recently (2010) decided that the constitution guarantees the right to bear arms (District of Columbia v. Heller), seems like that is a simple analogy “gotcha” question for the “liberal media”?

  19. I see Raphael and Huckabuck are going to the jail to meet miss (married 4 times) martyr today!

    Yeah, this is the best thing ever to happen to Saint Kim of the Holler, self-proclaimed Redeemer of Souls (b/c God will send Kim to Hell for the perceived sins of strangers dontchaknow). Look at all the attention she’s getting from the Mighty… Self-Righteous. (Both of em.)

    Blurgh. Please pass the Pepto.

  20. *** BREAKING! ***

    Oh noez! A meddlesome judge has released Saint Kim from jail! How will the Huckabuck campaign limousine ever find her now?

    (Straight down the red-dirt road a eighth of a mile, turn right at the rusted still, go on north three pig wallers to the middle of town. County Courthouse is the only buildin with a roof. Cain’t miss it.)

  21. “How will the Huckabuck campaign limousine ever find her now”

    Oh he was right by her side as she left the jail triumphant in her martyrdom (actually the judge let her go because the clerks office has complied with the law). Funny thing though as she came out of jail she hid behind a truck to give her statement (through her lawyer), and the only camera allowed to get the shot and audio was, wait for it………FAUX news, MSNBC and CNN had their cameras set up in the wrong spot, I wonder who orchestrated that? The right-wing Propaganda machine GOP-TeeVee is at full steam!

  22. Talk about shitting in a corner and bunching them…Huckabee is about to take the biggest dump possible. A testament to Christendom. Now Cruz and Huckabee are going to be trying to outdo one another to become Lord of the Flies.
    In a way, I kind of feel sorry for Kim Davis. I see her as being used as a guinea pig by the Christian law firm that is egging her on. And also by her Pastor who should give her mature scriptural counseling rather than encouraging a foolish zeal that is contrary to a deeper understanding of a Christian’s responsibility to their God.
    I know I’m just talking out my ass when I talk about understanding Christianity, not because I don’t know what I’m talking about, but because just talking about the expectations of a spiritually concepted being kind of leaves you out in space without any kind of anchor to a fixed reality. At best, you can only hope to find resonance for your truth and understanding in the ears of another listener.
    Sometimes we see things that are of a visceral nature that can’t be articulated in a meaningful way. We might see a parallel in expression that appears to have no relevant connection in what we are trying to express, but nevertheless, we do see what we see.
    Here’s a little something that I see a parallel in for expressing the difference between Ted Cruz’s and Mike Huckabee’s delivery style for capitalizing on Kim Davis’s current predicament, and their working to advance the foil of religious liberty being impinged upon.
    See if you can guess which one portrays Huckabee?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qflfp736qoo

  23. “At best, you can only hope to find resonance for your truth and understanding in the ears of another listener”

    Swami, your problem is that you have actually studied your religion and believe, you need to use religion as a tool for hate, get with the program!

  24. Good move that the Judge released her…It deflates her martyrdom somewhat, and if she continues with her antics she’ll be putting herself and her deputies at risk of serious fines or jail time. It’s one thing to be a martyr for yourself, but it’s another thing to have somebody else suffer financial devastation and public humiliation to serve your own desires..I think Kim is going to get a real test of her Christian faith. Or her deputies are going to learn the hard way what a propitiation is.

  25. I kind of feel sorry for Kim Davis.

    All smartassery aside, I am reminded of Pvt. Lynndie England et al, the ones who took the fall for the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. They weren’t edumacated enough to understand the crimes they were encouraged to commit; like Ms. Davis, they were just Americans whose lack of sophistication was put to good use by the Right. “They Were Expendable,” indeed.

  26. “She’ll do her job good.” – Kim Davis’s lawyer. An actual verbatim quote.

    “Let Kim go, but if you have to put someone in jail, I volunteer to go. Let me go. Lock me up if you think that’s how freedom is best served.” – Huckabuck. Tempting Lady Justice with his saucy ways. You tease.

    That press conference had to be one of those “You can’t make this stuff up” kinda deals. I wish we had teevee here at work.

  27. I hope the judge told Kim Davis the same thing that Warden Norton in the movie Shawshank Redemption told Andy Dufresne what would happen to him if he didn’t do as he was told…. ” I’ll pull you out of that one-bunk Hilton and cast you down with the Sodomites”

  28. Well, I’m certainly no legal beagle or intellectual heavyweight, but it looks to me like the Judge got Kim in a compliance checkmate. And Huckabee and Cruz are going to discard her like a used rubber.

  29. “Good move that the Judge released her…”

    He let her go because the county clerks office is issuing marriage licenses for everybody equally as the law prescribes. I reckon that if Ms (4 times) Martyr goes back to work and stops issuing marriage licenses as I’m sure her GOP handlers are advising she’ll be right back in the grey bar motel and the exploitation circus can resume full speed ahead!

  30. Why do I get the feeling we are going to have a showdown with the federal authorities Ala- the Bundy ranch over Ms. (4-time) Martyr? I’ll not be the least surprised if a whole “regiment” of “oath-keeper” militia god warriors with assault rifles strapped show up at the Rowan County Clerks office, these miscreants have been trying to get a confrontation with the feds ever since that colored fella got elected, this could be another shot at the promise land?

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