Kentucky state Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker Greg Stumbo have repeated their request to Governor Besmear to call a special session of the state legislature so they can pass legislation that would resolve the current issue regarding Kim Davis and issuing marriage licenses.
In addition, Stivers filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge David Bunning to wait until the legislature can convene before taking action against Ms. Davis.
Governor Besmear again declined to call the legislature into session, saying Davis is defying the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The General Assembly will convene in four months and can make statutory changes it deems necessary at that time. I see no need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money calling a special session of the General Assembly,” Beshear said.
Human Rights Campaign’s Chad Griffin on County Clerk Kim Davis:
“With the results of the United States Supreme Court decision, the Obergefell case, marriage licenses must be issued equally. “That’s her job. She has to do that, or she has to step aside.”
I watch Hardball every day. Right before this segment aired, Kornacki teased Staver’s appearance. I tweeted to Hardball that there better be someone to present the LGBT perspective on this continuing story.
Turns out we didn’t need anyone other than guest host Steve Kornacki, who appropriately handled anti-gay Liberty Counsel lawyer Mat Staver.
Staver repeatedly stated Davis’ “religious freedom” must be “accommodated.”
Kornacki didn’t hold back, citing Davis’ clear hypocrisy.
“If she says she has a moral and religious objection to same-sex marriage I think it raises the question, does she have a moral and religious objection to a divorced person getting re-married? Does she have a moral and religious objection to someone who’s engaged in premarital relations getting married? Where does this end?”
Columnist and LGBT activist Dan Savage appeared on MSNBC last night to share his thoughts regarding the ongoing – and hypocritical – refusal by Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
This appearance came shortly after US News and World Report published shocking revelations that Davis, who has been divorced three times, actually gave birth to children fathered by her third husband while she was married to her first. It gets very complicated I know.
“I think Kim Davis is waiting to cash in,” Savage told MSNBC. “I predicted from the beginning that she would defy all the court orders, defy the Supreme Court, she would ultimately be held in contempt of court, lose her job, perhaps go to prison for a short amount of time. And then she will have written for her, ghost written books. She will go on the right-wing lecture circuit and she’ll never have to do an honest day’s work ever again in her life.”
“This is about someone hypocritically cashing in, and she is a hypocrite,” he added.
Savage referred to the defiant clerk’s statement complaining that courts were asking her to “violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage” — which the columnist dismissed as ridiculous.
“This is a woman who’s been divorced three times and married four times,” he said, reading from the US News & World Report article that pointed out Davis “gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband, (and) they were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second husband.”
“She’s now onto her fourth husband,” Savage said. “Jesus Christ himself in scripture condemned divorce, called it adultery and forbids it. Jesus Christ himself in scripture says not one word about same-sex marriage.”
I’ve written here on The Randy Report for sometime that while folks are paying attention to the surface of this story – the issuance of marriage licenses – this is actually about Davis looking for a windfall of money via crowdsourcing campaign by anti-gay haters as we’ve seen in the past with pizza makers, florists and bakers. Along the way, Liberty Counsel and other haters get a new face of martyrdom in Davis.
Davis and her full office of deputy clerks have been summoned to federal court Thursday morning regarding possible contempt of court charges.
The American Civil Liberties Union, advocating on behalf of a male same-sex couple repeatedly denied a marriage license by Kim Davis’ office, is asking that U.S. District Judge Bunning not jail Davis but levy fines significant enough to compel her compliance.
The ACLU has filed a contempt of court motion against Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis for her refusal to follow the law and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Last night, Davis ran out of legal options when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. Davis is now bound by the ruling by U.S. District Judge Bunning to begin issuing marriage licenses.
The motion specifically asks that Davis not be thrown in jail, but be fined. Clearly the visual of Davis being incarcerated would give the haters the martyr they are dreaming of.
Plaintiffs do not seek to compel Davis’ compliance through incarceration. Since Defendant Davis continues to collect compensation from the Commonwealth for duties she fails to perform, Plaintiffs urge the the Court to impose financial penalties sufficiently serious and increasingly onerous to compel Davis’ immediate compliance without further delay.
According to the AP, Davis and her deputy clerks have been summoned to a federal court hearing this coming Thursday at 11am where she may be found in contempt of court.
The U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis’ request for a stay on a federal judge’s ruling that would require her to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
“The application for stay presented to Justice (Elena) Kagan and by her referred to the Court is denied,” the order said.
Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees the 6th district, referred Davis’ request to the full court, which denied the stay without comment.
A stay issued earlier by U.S. District Judge David Bunning expired Monday.
In a separate development, the Kentucky attorney general is mulling whether to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether she violated the state official misconduct statute when her office refused to issue a license to a Rowan County gay couple.
Official misconduct is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 365 days in jail.
Done and done.
Do your job, Kim Davis.
UPDATE:
The Human Rights Campaign issued this statement:
“Ms. Davis’ choices are clear: she must either choose to follow the law or resign her public position. A public official’s personal religious opinion does not give her the privilege to trample over the rights of others. Freedom of religion is important, and Ms. Davis has the fundamental right to believe what she likes. But as a public servant, she does not have the right to pick and choose which laws she will follow or which services she will provide. We are pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court has denied the stay.”
And the ACLU had this to say:
“Today the U.S. Supreme Court resoundingly affirmed that government officials must carry out the duties of public office. By refusing to simply issue a form, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has prevented our clients, four loving couples, from obtaining marriage licenses in the county where they live and pay taxes. Davis has no basis for any further delay in denying couples the freedom to marry.”
The Rowan County Attorney’s Office said on Friday that it has referred to the Attorney General’s Office a charge of official misconduct against Davis. A release from the county attorneys office says Kentucky Bar Association “Rules of the Supreme Court of Kentucky prohibit the Rowan County Attorney’s Office from prosecuting Davis” because they are involved in current litigation with Davis.
“Typically, the attorney general’s office refers conflict cases to a prosecutor from another county,” the release says.
The release says Rowan County Government and the Rowan County Attorney’s Office cannot take any other action against Kim Davis.
“Kentucky state government is the only entity that can move to have Kim Davis removed as Rowan County Clerk,” the release says.
A spokeswoman for the attorney generals office told WKYT they are looking into the matter.
Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, having received a big fat “no” from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals regarding a stay on a federal judge’s ruling that would compel her to follow the law and issue marriage licenses, is now heading to the U.S. Supreme Court asking for an “emergency” stay.
The original stay by federal Judge David Bunning expires on Monday, August 31st. That stay was issued in “deference” to the 6th Circuit Court. Davis has asked Bunning for an extension to accommodate time for SCOTUS.
This Court granted Davis a temporary stay of the Injunction Order through August 31, 2015. (Docs. 52, 55.) The Court’s reason for granting the temporary stay was “deference to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals . . . to give the appellate court an opportunity to review, on an expedited basis,” Davis’ request for a stay pending appeal. (Doc. 55 at 1.)
The Sixth Circuit entered an order denying Davis’ motion for stay pending appeal by Order dated August 26, 2015. (6th Cir. Case No. 15-5880, Doc. 28-1.) Davis filed today, however, in the Supreme Court of the United States, an emergency application to stay the Injunction Order.
Accordingly, Davis now requests that this Court extend the same deference to the Supreme Court, to give the Supreme Court an opportunity to review and finally decide Davis’ emergency application for stay.
WHEREFORE, defendant/Third-Party Plaintiff Kim Davis respectfully requests that this Court extend the temporary stay of the Injunction Order pending the Supreme Court’s final disposition of her emergency application for a stay pending appeal, by the form of the proposed order attached hereto.
It is doubtful that SCOTUS would grant the “emergency” stay. Davis’ cases hinges on flouting the ruling made BY SCOTUS.
And speaking of that ruling, all requests that come from within the 6th Circuit are routed to Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagen, who sided in favor of marriage equality in the recent historic ruling.
In her filing with SCOTUS, Davis’ lawyers contend that since there are county clerks in Kentucky (several hours away), gays and lesbians can still get married, so what’s the harm?
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