A small group of county clerks in Kentucky have said that they will defy the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality and refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. One of them, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, recently lost her case in federal court and is likely to lose on appeal.
On Monday, Casey County Clerk Casey Davis (no relation) appeared on Huntington, West Virginia’s “The Tom Roten Morning Show” to discuss how he similarly plans to defy the courts if ordered to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples … even to the point of death.
Davis railed against Gov. Steve Beshear for complying with the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, insisting that the governor should flout the Obergefell decision: “I think that’s a travesty to think that just because he don’t see it this way or his opinion is to let same-sex marriage go and it’s all right that us as Christians, we as Christians just don’t have rights anymore? That’s wrong sir. That’s not right.”
“It’s a war on Christianity,” he said. “There is a travesty taking place with that Supreme Court ruling was completely unconstitutional, completely unconstitutional. They have no right to tell us, the state of Kentucky, that our law that was voted with what was 70 percent of the people that it was wrong, they had no right.”
An emotional Davis went on to claim that he may lose his life in defiance of marriage equality: “Our law says ‘one man and one woman’ and that is what I held my hand up and took an oath to and that is what I expected. If it takes it, I will go to jail over — if it takes my life, I will die for because I believe I owe that to the people that fought so I can have the freedom that I have, I owe that to them today, and you do, we all do. They fought and died so we could have this freedom and I’m going to fight and die for my kids and your kids can keep it.”
Demanding that Beshear call a special session of the legislature to give him and other clerks a reprieve from doing their job duties, Davis said that the governor should “sit down with a man and a woman who sent their child off to war alive, hugged their neck, told them they loved them and brought them back in a pine box and get them to tell me what the price of freedom is.”
Davis said that the same-sex marriage isn’t real marriage because it violates the Bible: “Where is Adam and Eve’s marriage license recorded at and who did they go get them issued by? I’ll tell you, God issued them. God ordained it. Whether you believe in God or not, the Bible is where marriage came from and it is where it will continue to come from regardless of what man says that it is. It will never be anything but between one man and one woman in the eyes of God, that’s what marriage is and someone else may label it as something else but it can never be anything except between one man and one woman.”
