The 24-hour news cycle has transformed how we know about events, and when we know about them, and blogs, by their very nature, are somewhat like yesterday's newspaper: interesting, but only as relevant as the immediacy of the message they carry. That is, unless you are writing about something predictable and unchanging; something that you know from experience is going to be the same today as it was yesterday, or weeks or months ago; something chiseled in stone or embedded in concrete.
Such a thing is Kim Davis, and her refusal to issue marriage licenses.
I have two dogs in this fight. The first is my long-time personal advocacy for marriage equality, which I have been writing about, posting about, and marching in support of for many years now. The Supreme Court ruling in June was, unarguably, the watershed moment in the history of the LGBTI equality movement, one of those historical moments when we define our lives as "before this happened" and "after this happened." But after I gave myself five minutes to celebrate, I could not escape the feeling that somehow, based on the bureaucracies of local governments and the strong grass-roots resentment against this long awaited triumph, that there would be trouble in the trenches of marriage, that county and/or local officials might in fact find a way to refuse, or at least delay, equal treatment of same sex couples. My friends, many of whom call me "John the Cynic," told me I needed to see this glass as half full, to see it as the victory that it is, and stop worrying about the minutiae of problems down the road. So I smiled, while still looking over my shoulder for the other shoe to drop.
In the immediate days after the Supreme Court ruling, there were "rumors of wars" that turned out to be solvable, albeit with a great deal of pain and sacrifice on the part of several gay couples nationwide. Here in Houston where I live (a city I dearly love, by the way) the Harris County Clerk of Courts, Stan Stanart, initially refused to issue same sex licenses, using the excuse of a "necessary computer software update." A strong letter from the Harris County Attorney fixed that. In Hood County, near Ft. Worth, a same sex couple was refused three times before finally filing a lawsuit that forced the clerk to begin issuing licenses immediately, while costing the taxpayers of that county several thousand dollars in legal fees. Many counties in Alabama and Mississippi were slow to come on board, and Louisiana was downright intransigent, due in large part to pronouncements on the part of bigot-in-chief of that otherwise great state, Bobby Jindal. But as more couples demanded their rights, and justifiably threatened to sue if they were refused, the problem dwindled to just a few backward pockets of resistance, many of which are rural counties where the prospect of a same sex couple asking for a license is unlikely, as a practical matter. And the LGBTI equality movement seemed to have found it's mechanism for resolution. All would be well.
And then, Kim Davis happened.
That brings me to my second dog in the fight, and it is a personal one. One of the reasons why I have devoted so much time to the issue of county clerk compliance is that I know Kim Davis. I do not mean that I know her personally, but I grew up in a family of Kim Davises--people who think like her, feel as she does, and sympathize with her positions. I know how their minds work, what motivates them and makes them tick. For me, Kim Davis is that "other shoe waiting to drop," and the hell she has created for all the couples of Rowan County who are being refused licenses is that potential "worst nightmare" I was afraid of. She is someone who, like Bartleby the Scrivener in the famous short story by Herman Melville, simply said "I'd prefer not to." And from that moment I knew, based on my long experience with the Kim Davises in my life, where we would find ourselves right now. There are things I have been saying throughout this ordeal I can promise you are true. She will never issue a marriage license to a same sex couple. She will never resign. She does not care about anything that judges or courts have to say. She does not care if she is fined. She does not care if she goes to jail. And she does not care about the couples she has refused to serve, whether they are being denied their rights or not, whether they have recourse against her are not. She does not care. Period.
So the focus moves back to the couples, and to the marriage equality movement as a whole. Given these realities, the emphasis must be on a solution to make these couples whole that takes into account the fact that Davis granting licenses or resigning are options that are off the table. That might take the form of the federal judge who is handling the case in Ashland finding her in contempt, which would result in her being impeached. Or, if she is sitting in a jail cell, perhaps the case can be made that she is "absent from work" and a clerk who is willing to issue licenses would be then be able to do so. Or, perhaps she will be fined so deeply and so heavily that she would have no choice but to resign. (This option is the least likely, given the proclivity of the Far Right to set up crowd funding accounts for bigots, providing them with hundreds of thousands of dollars, a sort of macabre "pay check" for hatred.) But one thing is for sure: all of these possibilities involve more waiting, more time spent, more legal maneuvering on the part of the couples, whose lives have already been torn to pieces by this woman's ignorance and hatred and cruelty.
And the last question: will Kim Davis be viewed as a "Christian martyr" by the vast majority of Americans? Based on what I have been seeing and hearing, the answer to that is an emphatic NO. The Christian Right, and Davis herself, have overplayed their hand this time, and very much misjudged the American people. The American people have a very strong sense of what is right, just and fair. For example, I have dozens of conservative friends who were, to one degree or another, against the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling. But to a man, or woman, every single one of those people have told me that they believe Kim Davis is wrong, and that she needs to do the job that she was elected (and is being paid $80,000 a year) to do. No, she is no martyr--rather, she will be remembered as a hypocritical bully, someone who tried to use religion to propagate hatred and lost. And in that regard, Kim Davis is one of the best things that could have ever happened to the LGBTI equality movement. She is a persecutor posing as the persecuted. And the American people have little patience with someone who refuses to follow the rules, like they do. Like we all do. Every Kim Davis helps galvanize the support of the American people for gay rights, and reminds them that gay people are "just like them"--hard-working, taxpaying, patriotic Americans.
So thank you, Kim Davis. When your saga is finally over, what will remain is your legacy, and that legacy is clear: hatred and cruelty and hypocrisy cannot defeat love and fairness and justice. Thank you for proving the point we have been trying to make all along.
