Four Reasons Christians Should Support Kim Davis

I don’t think the 10th amendment bars SCOTUS from ruling state laws unconstitutional. KY’s DOMA was struck down in Obergefell.

Seeing as how Kim Davis is member of a Oneness Pentecostal church, perhaps we should be praying for her salvation instead. If you want to rally on this, rally around the issue, not Kim Davis as a “Christian.” If she believes in the modalist heresy, as her church does, then she is not a Christian. ​

I think we should be a bit more circumspect about the hills we want to die on. The Bible is clear about the ‘unequal yoke’, and yet has any Christian working as a clerk of courts requested that they not be required to issue a marriage license to a Christian marrying a non-Christian? Or worse, a Baptist marrying a Catholic!

Ok - I typed that last part with my sarcasm hand.

Although I believe that same sex relationships are sinful, from my pov the gov’t should not be in the marriage business at all. Marriage should be a contract between two individuals (or carbon-based life forms) and the gov’t only steps in when the contract is violated.

If I extend any support to Kim Davis, it will be because she was within her rights according to the law.

has any Christian working as a clerk of courts requested that they not be required to issue a marriage license to a Christian marrying a non-Christian? Or worse, a Baptist marrying a Catholic!

At least one difference is that those are actual marriages. Same sex marriage is not an actual marriage.

Secondly, the whole point of conscience is that it belongs to the individual. So claiming this person or that person should have this conscience or that conscience is beside the point. It might be true, but no one should coerce that. If her conscience tells her certain things, then she must not sin against it.

I don’t think we should be questioning her salvation at this point. That’s quite beside the point for this discussion. Whether Christian or not, under our law, she has a right to conscience and that should be honored. There are very reasonable accommodations that could have ended this months ago. It is a failure on the part of everyone from the governor to the legislature to the courts to the couples.

Yes, we are allowed to act according to conscience, but our conscience is to be guided by Scripture. If unequal yokes are forbidden, and same sex marriage is forbidden, then forbidden is forbidden. This isn’t a gray area where someone can claim conscience IMO. Not like music or drinking alcoholic beverages or going to movies. There is a ‘thou shalt not’ for both unequal yokes and same sex relationships.

In any case, I’m not going to rally around Kim Davis as a martyr for the cause of Christ. If she is within her rights according to the law to not sign her name to a marriage certificate of a same sex couple, then she should fight for her rights, and that I can support. But I’m not beholden to her to defend Biblical principles on behalf of all Christians.

Yes, we are allowed to act according to conscience, but our conscience is to be guided by Scripture. If unequal yokes are forbidden, and same sex marriage is forbidden, then forbidden is forbidden. This isn’t a gray area where someone can claim conscience IMO.

Exactly: “IMO.” You are entitled to that, but that doesn’t mean someone else has to agree with you. And that’s the point of conscience. It is individual, and in our society, it cannot legally be coerced and scripturally it should not be violated lest we sear it. It should be trained by Scripture, but when it’s not, it is still conscience and it must not be violated. The Scripture does not give explicit and unambiguous instruction on whether one’s name at the bottom of a license is approval or not. Therefore, there is no way to declare that someone can’t claim conscience. Even when something is explicity, conscience is still forbidden to be violated.

But you miss a key point. An unequal marriage is a marriage (assuming you have rightly proscribed such a marriage). A same sex marriage is no marriage at all. So you are comparing two things that have nothing in common in terms of marriage, such as when someone thinks something is wrong that actually isn’t wrong.

In any case, I’m not going to rally around Kim Davis as a martyr for the cause of Christ. If she is within her rights according to the law to not sign her name to a marriage certificate of a same sex couple, then she should fight for her rights, and that I can support. But I’m not beholden to her to defend Biblical principles on behalf of all Christians.

I won’t either. That’s not the point in the least. This is a point about our rights as citizens. Even if she isn’t a Christian, she can still take correct stands. Or incorrect stands. And in our system, it is incumbent on the government to make all reasonable accommodations for religious conscience.

The complication is that Kim Davis is NOT PERSONALLY condoning any marriage by placing her signature on the marriage license. She is the county clerk. The local government representative. In its human wisdom, the US Supreme Court has decided that same-sex marriage is a marriage that the entire GOVERNMENT will recognize. So, as county clerk her job is to evaluate the LEGALITY of the people who are requesting the marriage license. Do they meet the requirements of Kentucky and Federal law for a marriage?

If the answer is YES… she signs the form. If NO, she doesn’t.

Either way, IT IS NOT UP TO HER to judge the morality of the marriage in any way. By signing the document she is not morally justifying anything.

If she cannot do that, then she needs to let someone else do that or resign.

The complication is that Kim Davis is NOT PERSONALLY condoning any marriage by placing her signature on the marriage license.

That’s your conscience, not hers. And she is the one in the spotlight here. You can try to convince her that she is not personally condoning any marriage, but you have to convince her of that. You cannot simply declare it by fiat and then expect her to acquiesce. Again, it should be obvious but apparently is not, the whole point of a right of conscience is for the individual, not for a group and not for someone else.

Do they meet the requirements of Kentucky and Federal law for a marriage?

Actually, same sex partners do not meet the requirements of Kentucky law until the law is changed.

I was giving a legal analysis that is factual. A notary public is NOT condoning any morality of what they are signing, just that it is legally valid. A county clerk is NOT judging the ethics or morality of anything. That is a fact.

As for the “not a law” argument, the moment the USSC declared that same-sex marriage is equal to traditional marriage, the laws that restricted marriage to opposite sex couples were instantly null and void. That is not an opinion, it is a fact.

Agree with Mark’s comments above. And this is, in my view, one of the most troubling things about Phillips’ post. He acts as if SCOTUS has no authority here or as if it is somehow subservient to the state constitution or the oath the clerk swore. This is incorrect as a matter of law (i.e., objectively). All but a few on the fringe have accepted the Supreme Court’s authority re: abortion - despite strenuous disagreement. Somehow gay marriage is a special case where Christians can blithely ignore an entire branch of government?!

[Jack]

Somehow gay marriage is a special case where Christians can blithely ignore an entire branch of government?!

Apparently not….

But it’s ok to blithely ignore the government over taxes: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1750-1775/parliamentary-taxation

Uhh, Jack, the whole point of civil disobedience is “ignoring” (i.e., disobeying) government, no matter what specific branch.

Perhaps I’m misreading Phillips, but I didn’t understand him to be conceding that the clerk’s actions were civil disobedience. His first point seems to me to undermine that interpretation.

Regarding civil disobedience more generally, I believe we may engage in civil disobedience only when there is a true dichotomy: obey God or obey the authorities. That’s not the case here because the clerk can resign if any other course (e.g., allowing others in the office to grant the licenses) truly violates her conscience. I may be a hardliner on this - I don’t believe the American Revolution was justified - but it seems to me a pretty bright line in Scripture.

I was giving a legal analysis that is factual.

Not sure what your expertise is that allows you to give legal analyses. I don’t recall it being either consitutional law or religious freedom, though perhaps I misrecall. The fact remains that religious objectors have always had the right to refuse, and the government has historically not been able to coerce that except in very rare circumstances. I think you are simply mistaken on this issue. There are many less restrictive means that could be used to address this problem, and that is part of the strict scrutiny test.

Whether or not Davis is right or wrong about her view, the fact remains that she is entitled to her objection under the law and the courts are wrong to attempt to coerce her to do otherwise.

I tend to agree that one’s signature on something is tantamount to approval. That’s the usual way a signature is viewed, and it what a signature means. You probably think the same thing. That’s why signatures are required on contracts, checks, etc. It is approval. And when you don’t sign it, you have a reasonable argument that you didn’t approve it. When you do sign it, you have virtually no reasonable argument that you didn’t sign it.

In the end, regardless of the Christian or religious merits of this, there is indisputably a constitutional right to conscientious objection and the government is bound to take the least restrictive means to achieve its end. They did not do that.

OK…Let’s say this Kim Davis case is about accommodation. All that she needs to do to resolve this is let some other person in her office sign the same-sex marriage forms. It is my understanding that she wouldn’t allow that before. That would be accommodation. I think she thinks accommodation is that no same-sex couples are allowed to get marriage licenses through her office while she is the clerk. That is NOT accommodation.

Others like Mike Huckabee have suggested that same-sex marriage is not technically legal in Kentucky yet. That is simply not true. I don’t like it, but the SCOTUS ruling makes it legal.

If Kim Davis wants to challenge the legality of same-sex marriage, or the SCOTUS right to declare that “the law” in US, fine. But realize that is a 3 year process. In the mean time same-sex couples are going to get married in her county. Why? Because it is legal in every other county in the US.

Tell me, is this really about accommodation, or about over turning judicial tyranny. Pick one and act consistently.