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Title: Kentucky clerk still won't issue same-sex marriage licenses
Source:
Associated Press
URL Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie ... AULT&CTIME=2015-09-01-08-52-48
Published: Sep 1, 2015
Author: Claire Valofaro
Post Date: 2015-09-01 10:04:38 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 39190
Comments: 339
A county clerk in Kentucky has again refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, invoking her religious beliefs and "God's authority" - this time in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against her. On Tuesday morning, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis' office denied the licenses to at least two couples. At first, Davis was in her office with the door closed and blinds drawn. But she emerged a few minutes later, telling the couples and the activists gathered there that her office is continuing to deny the licenses "under God's authority." The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene in the case, leaving Davis no legal grounds to refuse to grant the licenses. A district judge could now hold her in contempt of court, which can carry steep fines or jail time. As an elected official, Davis can't be fired. Davis asked David Moore and David Ermold to leave her office after they were denied a license Tuesday morning - the couple's fourth rejection. They refused, surrounded by reporters and cameras. "We're not leaving until we have a license," Ermold said. "Then you're going to have a long day," Davis told him. From the back of the room, Davis' supporters said: "Praise the Lord! ... Stand your ground." Other activists shouted that Davis is a bigot and told her: "Do your job." Davis has said her deeply held Christian beliefs don't let her endorse gay marriages. She stopped issuing all marriage licenses in the days after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the nation. Two gay couples and two straight couples sued her, arguing that she must fulfill her duties as an elected official despite her personal religious faith. A federal judge ordered her to issue the licenses, and an appeals court upheld that decision. Her lawyers with the Liberty Counsel filed a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking that they grant her "asylum for her conscience." Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees the 6th district, referred Davis' request to the full court, which denied the stay without comment. After Tuesday's denials, the rejected couples' supporters called the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit on their behalf. They asked that the attorneys file that day to have Davis held in contempt. Shortly after Davis' remarks in her office, the sheriff's office cleared the room and building of those gathered to support both sides of the issue. The two groups lined up on the lawn, on either side of the courthouse entrance to chant at each other. Davis' supporters have told her to "stand firm," while gay-rights activists shouted "do your job." Randy Smith, leading the group supporting Davis, said he knows following their instruction to "stand firm" might mean Davis goes to jail. "But at the end of the day, we have to stand before God, which has higher authority than the Supreme Court," he said. Ermold hugged Moore, his partner of 17 years, and they cried and swayed as they left the clerk's office. Davis' supporters marched by, chanting. "I feel sad, I feel devastated," Ermold said. "I feel like I've been humiliated on such a national level, I can't even comprehend it." 
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 94.
#1. To: cranky, *Religious History and Issues* (#0)
Wonder if these same activists know that doctors cannot be forced into giving sex change operations or even performing abortions and prescribing birth control pills. If I remember correctly, county clerks do more than issue marriage licenses. I also know this gay couple could go to another county and get a license. So why push someone to do something against their convictions?
So why push someone to do something against their convictions? They are doing it on principle, and they will certainly win too. The woman is a public official America is a secular, pagan state, with secular pagan laws, one of which is the legality of slaughtering babies in the womb, and another of which is the constitutional requirement to treat gay couples the same as any normal couple when it comes to marriage. She is an agent of the state. She serves Caesar and takes Caesar's coin. Therefore, she must obey Caesar. If he conscience does not allow her to serve Caesar because of what Caesar demands of her, then she must stop taking Caesar's coin. She must resign her post and leave it. Before the issue was litigated before the Supreme Court, it was an open question, but now Caesar has spoken, very clearly. You cannot serve both God and Caesar on the matter of gay marriage. If you try to, you are breaking the laws of Caesar, and you will be punished by Caesar. Of course, Christians do not need to get married by the state at all to be married in the eyes of God. The state's license and sanction mean nothing, at all, in the court of God. Did a man and a woman consecrate themselves to the other before God, consummate the union, and keep to each other having no others? Then they are married. The state has all sorts of contracts and the laws that govern the relationship in its pagan ways, but Christians are not required by God to go through any licensing or formal ceremony to be married. You cannot serve both God and money, and you cannot serve both God and the American government either. There was a time when you could, sort of, but that time has passed. You cannot do so anymore, in the capacity of clerk. The proper answer is for her, and everybody else, to understand that state- sanctioned marriage is not marriage. Marriage is a spiritual union before God, a covenant that God consecrates. The state was permitted to come to that table, but the state has attempted to take over that table. In fact, neither the state NOR the Church is required to consecrate a covenant of marriage before God. All that is required is God and the two individuals who are marrying, and their following God's law of marriage. There is no marriage license requirement in God's law, and there is no requirement of a minister or a church service either. To the extent that the laws of men - both governmental and church - have become so oppressive as to try to cancel out the spiritual essence of marriage, those who follow God need to stop submitting to the laws of men - whether governmental OR ECCLESIAL - and marry before God. No witnesses are required either: that is a Christian and Jewish tradition only, not a commandment. That's the truth. Christians used to control American government. Trouble is, the Christians behaved very evilly - engaging in slavery, and in warfare, and in oppressive economic practices, all in violation of God's law. The Hypocritical Christian was (and is) the American standard, and hypocrisy utterly discredits the organized faith in the eyes of everybody. Those OUTSIDE the faith treat it as the joke that it IS, when it is hypocritical. And those WITHIN the faith make a public display but do as they please in public. Speak for Christ, actually QUOTE the law, chapter and verse, and Hypocritical Christians will scream at you. They will not be silent, repent and follow God. And so the Christian edifice rotted and lost power. Now, there is grasping at straws, trying to straddle an absurdity. Here's the truth: if a man and a woman who are virgins consecrate themselves to each other before God, in private, with nobody else present, and consummate the marriage sexually, and keep God's law, THEY ARE MARRIED. The Church says they are not, but God never ever gave the Church any authority to determine what a marriage is: THAT is established by God's law, not by human tradition. And the STATE has NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT. The proper thing for Christians to do today is to "shack up", in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of their churches, for life. No Church will marry people without a marriage license, but what the state gives is not a license to marry, for the state has no power to limit real marriage. Christians should ignore the state completely and get no marriage licenses. And that means that their Churches will not marry them, which is fine, because the Church marriage is nothing but a party and a ceremony. Christians should shack up for life and be faithful, wear rings and call themselves married, because THEY ARE. Play the game of licenses and churches, and you submit to Satan. And given this, the woman can keep her job, give out these fake licenses to anybody, but must herself hew to what "marriage" actually is - and it requires neither license nor ceremony. If she wants to immolate herself as a martyr, she can. The problem is that she is martyring herself for the principle that what the state offers is "marriage", and it is not. The state has no power to offer marriage. Marriage is a covenant between three: two people and God. Nobody else's permission is required, and nobody has to be present, or told about it, for it to exist.
She is not an employee of the state. She is an elected official which to me is key. She is responsible for duties on the authority derived directly from the people of her voting district (county) and it seems to me that any judge that would jail her would violate the separation of powers, undermining the will of the majority of county voters. The county voters are her "Ceasar", not any judge. She is committing no crime. If the county voters think she is doing poorly, they can vote her out of office in the next election. That's the "remedy", if one is needed.
We rejected such fascistic reasoning at Nuremburg.. Well put, and absolutely true. She could be 'impeached', I'd guess, but that would raise questions on the constitutionality of an impeachment over religious beliefs, that I doubt the courts would want to face.
Well put, and absolutely true. I saw this reply on another site. What is her crime? :----
Contempt of court. The court has equitable powers. It has used them on her. Now the end-game will be: the clerks issue the licenses, and she stays in jail until she either (a) agrees not to interfere with them or (b) resigns.
There are no replies to Comment # 94. End Trace Mode for Comment # 94.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestDavis has said her deeply held Christian beliefs don't let her endorse gay marriages.
#2. To: redleghunter (#1)
(Edited)
I also know this gay couple could go to another county and get a license.
#4. To: Vicomte13 (#2)
She is an agent of the state. She serves Caesar and takes Caesar's coin. Therefore, she must obey Caesar.
#7. To: Pinguinite, Y'ALL (#4)
She is an agent of the state. She serves Caesar and takes Caesar's coin. Therefore, she must obey Caesar.
She is not an employee of the state. She is an elected official which to me is key. She is responsible for duties on the authority derived directly from the people of her voting district (county) and it seems to me that any judge that would jail her would violate the separation of powers, undermining the will of the majority of county voters. The county voters are her "Ceasar", not any judge. --- She is committing no crime. If the county voters think she is doing poorly, they can vote her out of office in the next election. That's the "remedy", if one is needed. --- Pinguinite.
Vicomte -- she will be haled into court and fined or jailed from contempt, suspended from her job and ultimately released for it.
#85. To: Pinguinite, Vicomte, nolu chan, Y'ALL (#7)
Pinguinite --- She is not an employee of the state. She is an elected official which to me is key. She is responsible for duties on the authority derived directly from the people of her voting district (county) and it seems to me that any judge that would jail her would violate the separation of powers, undermining the will of the majority of county voters. The county voters are her "Ceasar", not any judge. --- She is committing no crime.
Vicomte -- she will be haled into court and fined or jailed from contempt, suspended from her job and ultimately released for it.
Perhaps you can explain what federal law is being defied? I am unaware of any federal law in regards to marriage licenses since DOMA was struck down by SCOTUS.
Perhaps you can also explain what law SCOTUS has enacted in regards to marriage licenses that is being defied. I was unaware that SCOTUS could enact Federal or State legislation as I understand that it is not part of their Constitutional authority.
#94. To: tpaine (#85)
What is her crime? :
Replies to Comment # 94.
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