"I just want to give God the
glory. His people have rallied, and you are a strong people," Kim Davis
told the crowd after stepping outside, her arms raised like a victorious boxer,
to the blaring "Rocky"-sequel theme song "Eye of the
Tiger."
Her lawyer refused to say whether
she would defy the courts again. "Kim cannot and will not
violate her conscience," said Mat Staver, founder of the Liberty Counsel,
the Christian law firm representing Davis. As for whether she will issue
licenses, Staver said only: "You'll find out in the near future."
The Rowan County clerk whose defiance
has made her a hero to many on the religious right walked free after the
federal judge who ordered her locked up lifted the contempt ruling against her,
saying he was satisfied that her deputies were fulfilling their obligation to
grant licenses to same-sex couples in her absence.
But U.S. District Judge David
Bunning also warned Davis not to interfere again, or else she could wind up
back in jail.
Kim Davis, embraced by her lawyer,
Mat Staver, appears before the media with Republican presidential candidate
Mike Huckabee, left, outside the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson,
Ky., on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015.
Davis, 49, has refused to resign her
$80,000-a-year job. As an elected official, she can lose her post only if she
is defeated for re-election or is impeached by the state General Assembly. The
latter is unlikely, given the legislature's conservative slant.
As the surprise news of her
impending release spread, a crowd of dozens of supporters who had gathered on
the jailhouse lawn for a previously scheduled rally swelled to thousands. They
broke into "Amazing Grace" and "God Bless America" and
waved signs, flags and crosses.
Cries of thanks to Jesus echoed
through the crowd as Davis emerged next to Republican presidential candidate Mike
Huckabee and her husband, Joe, who was in overalls and a straw hat. Huckabee
and fellow GOP White House candidate Sen. Ted Cruz visited her at the jail just
after the decision came down.
"If somebody has to go to jail,
I'm willing to go in her place," said Huckabee, a former Baptist minister
and Arkansas governor. "She has shown more courage than any politician I
know."
Natalie Ferguson, who came to the
rally from Elora, Tennessee, said: "We have to stand because if we sit
back and be quiet, you know then as a Christian community we're going to get
run over."
Davis was locked up on Thursday for
the boldest act of resistance by a public official yet to the U.S. Supreme
Court ruling in June that effectively legalized same-sex marriage across the
nation. Citing "God's authority" and her belief that gay marriage is
a sin, Davis, an Apostolic Christian, stopped issuing all marriage licenses.
Two gay couples and two heterosexual
ones sued her. Bunning ordered Davis to issue the licenses, and the Supreme
Court backed him. But she still refused and was held in contempt of court and
hauled off to jail in handcuffs, igniting protests from religious
conservatives. They rallied for days at her office, at the jail and outside the
judge's home.
The timing of her release after just
five days came as something of a surprise. Last week, Bunning said that he
might reconsider his decision to jail her in a week.
Rowan County clerk Kim Davis,
center, hugs her attorney, Matt Staver, with Republican presidential candidate
Mike Huckabee, center, left, next to her after being released from the Carter
County Detention Center, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015, in Grayson, Ky. Davis, the
Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to
gay couples, was released Tuesday after five days behind bars. (Jonathan
Palmer/The Courier-Journal via AP) NO SALES; MAGS OUT; NO ARCHIVE; MANDATORY
CREDIT
Five of Davis' six deputy clerks —
all except her son, Nathan — agreed to issue licenses to gay couples with Davis
behind bars. In lifting the contempt order, Bunning asked for updates on the
clerks' compliance every two weeks.
On Tuesday, Staver, Davis' lawyer,
maintained that the licenses issued by her deputies are invalid. But the
Kentucky attorney general's office said it believes otherwise.
Dan Canon, an attorney for the
couples who sued, said they will ask the judge to again hold Davis in contempt
if she returns to work and blocks her deputies from dispensing licenses.
"We are hoping she is going to
comply with it. We'll have to see," Canon said. "But if experience is
a teacher, Ms. Davis just doesn't believe that court orders apply to her."
Davis' dispute has offered some of
the GOP presidential candidates an opportunity to appeal to many on the party's
evangelical Christian wing, which opposes gay marriage and has cast her jailing
as an issue of religious freedom.
On Monday, her lawyers took their
case to a federal appeals court, asking that she be allowed to remove her name
and title from marriage certificates issued in Rowan County so that she would
not have to act against her conscience.
Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat like
Davis, reiterated Tuesday that he will not call a special session of the
legislature to overhaul the marriage-licensing process by taking it out of the
hands of county officials and making it a state function.
"Hopefully we can move forward
now. We need to be thinking about so many things about the future of
Kentucky," he said.
Casey County Clerk Casey Davis, who
recently bicycled more than 400 miles across Kentucky in solidarity with Kim
Davis, called her jailing a "total injustice." He is not related to
her.
He said he is not issuing any
marriage licenses, and suspects the conflict could come to his county next. He
said only one same-sex couple has inquired about a license in his county and
was told there were no licenses being issued, and that's the last Davis heard
from them.
He said he, too, would be willing to
go to jail.
Source: Star
Tribune
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