The crusade for same-sex marriage was in part a heady debate over constitutional principles. In June the struggle reached its climax as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled laws forbidding same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Now only bitter-enders such as Kim Davis refuse to live with the results. In some eyes Davis is a hero, but she’s not to me or to anyone I know, or to anyone in that vast circle of distant acquaintances speaking their piece on Facebook. In this crowd she’s a reviled hypocrite, a mischief-making county clerk in Kentucky who’s been married umpteen times, picks and chooses among Scriptures, has a nose for advancing her own celebrity, and is none too bright.
A legal analysis by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post was headlined, “Kim Davis is no Rosa Parks.” Wrote Gerson, “There is no serious case to be made for the right of public officials to break laws they don’t agree with, even for religious reasons. This is, in essence, seizing power from our system of laws and courts.”
It’s not quite indistinguishable. When Davis refused to do her job, nobody got marriage licenses. When Conway refused to do his, the governor had a way around him, albeit one that stuck taxpayers with a bill. Or maybe we should say the big difference is that Conway was right whereas Davis is wrong and the courts have told her so. But neither rejoinder is a sufficient response to the point the blogger makes. Mainstream media, take a shot at it. I’m not asking anyone to think better of Davis or worse of Conway, but any story worth telling should be told complete with its contradictions.
