Can we stop with this Kim Davis thing? Please?
On the merits, I agree: the Rowan County, KY clerk who was recently jailed for her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples is a bigot, and a hypocrite (she’s been married three times), and her fashion sense is appalling. She is clearly unfit to do her job and should be fired. I don’t see how anyone who doesn’t take the Bible literally could dispute any of that.
I have not followed the story closely, and by that I mean that I have not clicked on anything with her name or face on it. But this story has been inescapable enough that I have inferred the broad strokes, because this dullard has been coming through my social feeds roughly 7,000 times a day for the last two weeks, as all us Enlightened Liberals look down our noses at her and belittle her religious beliefs and her sister-wife outfit and chortle as Survivor sues her for using “Eye of the Tiger” without permission.
And that is exactly what she, and more precisely, all her supporters want: they want us to expose ourselves as Liberal Elitists who are persecuting Christians and hate religious freedom, in hopes of winning more moderate Christians over to their side. For every snarky meme with Dick Cheney’s face Photoshopped onto Davis’ body, Davis’ supporters will raise you a Kim Davis-is-Rosa Parks or some other wrongheaded freedom fighter, we’re-the-victims analogy. And they will point to your snark as proof that Christians ARE being persecuted.
They are fighting to preserve the sanctity of marriage as they see it. I completely disagree with them, but I see why they’re doing what they’re doing. But what exactly are we fighting for by beating this drum all day every day for the last month? Marriage equality is a done deal. Does anyone really think that what Ms. Davis has done has prevented a single same-sex marriage? Maybe it’s delayed a few, but we’re not exactly talking about San Francisco or New York here; the VFW hall in Rowan County, KY can probably be rescheduled. Or the couples on the wrong end of Davis’ conscientious objection can do what half my friends did: have a legally nonbinding ceremony performed by one of their friends — be cheeky and have them dress as Davis! — and go down and do the real deed when this dummy is finally fired or moved to the Sanitation department.
The battle is over and won. Marriage equality is the law of the land. Nothing this small little person does in her small little town is going to change that, and all the attention we’re giving her is lending her doomed crusade credibility with the dipshits that agree with it.
What did we all think was going to happen? That the day after the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges that all the vociferous opposition to gay marriage was just going to evaporate? That the less evolved people who call it an abomination against God — like 30% of the country — would just ascend to the heavens and leave us in peace? Of course there are some dead-enders that are going to fight this until their dying breath. LET THEM. They already lost.
The alternative is to keep playing into their hands and alienating them even further, and supplying them with more fuel for their imaginary narrative that they are somehow the victim of a callous Liberal Elite. Just shut up and let them cry it out.