I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Kim Davis and the so-called Christian persecution in this country.
If you don’t know who Kim Davis is, this article will give you a decent overview. Basically, she’s a county clerk in Kentucky who has religious objections to marriage equality and has been refusing to issue licenses to same gender couples, even after the Supreme Court ruled marriage equality was guaranteed by the Constitution. She’s gone to jail for that and has recently been released again.
As wrong as I think she is (and be clear on that — she is very, very wrong), I have a certain amount of sympathy for her. I’ll take her word for it when she says that her religious beliefs forbid her to approve of marriage equality and that, for her, issuing the licenses present a genuine violation of her conscious. Having to choose between doing your job or violating your religious convictions is not a situation I would wish on anyone and so, when she says it is difficult for her, she has my sympathy.
However, she is a public servant. She took an oath to uphold the law. Laws change and marriage equality is now the law of the land. So she is left with two choices: do the job she was elected to do or resign. No, that’s not an easy place to be in. And no, it likely doesn’t feel very fair to her. Yet, there it is. There may be other options available to her. Perhaps her name can be removed from the licenses. She herself does not have to handle issuing the licenses, so long as someone in her office will. But that’s not what she wants. And that’s where my sympathy ends.
You are NOT being persecuted when you are not allowed to force your religious beliefs on others. You just aren’t. You may be uncomfortable with other people’s choices. You may disapprove of them. But you cannot forbid them, so long as those choices are legal. And if you do obstruct those choices in ways that break the law, you go to jail. Going to jail is not a violation of your religious beliefs either. It is the natural consequence of breaking the law, in this case she’s guilty of malfeasance in office and disobeying a court order. Anyone who committed those offenses would face the same punishment.
Furthermore, Davis could have avoided going to jail. She was offered a deal in which she allowed her deputies to provide the licenses without interference. She refused. Her deputies said they wanted to issue the licenses, but she prevented them from doing so. She has also said she believes those licenses issued in her absence are invalid. (The state of Kentucky doesn’t think so and neither does the federal government, so her beliefs won’t affect those who have those documents.)
She says she will report to work Monday. Davis was released on the condition that she not interfere with her deputies issuing the documents. I don’t put a lot of faith in her to do that, given she previously had no problem stopping them. So what happens then? A gay couple comes in, a deputy wants to give them the license and she won’t let that happen? Suppose the deputy does it anyway? Does she fire that deputy? Does she discipline that deputy? That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen and it’s one the deputy would win.
There is no Christian persecution in this country. The vast majority of the population identify as Christian. All of our presidents have been Christian. The majority of our politicians are Christian or at least give lip service to the faith. Our culture is saturated with Christian imagery and allusion. What’s happening is that a certain strain of Christianity is no longer being given as much priority as it once was and it’s adherents are not happy about that. At all. But that is NOT persecution. It’s not even close.
Ordinary Things 