As I said the other day, I’m trying to be more positive on here, so here’s a good news story:
Former Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, the pentecostal evangelical Christian who made international headlines in 2015, has now been ordered to pay a total of more than $360,000 after refusing to issue a marriage license to a local same-sex couple that year, ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in support of marriage equality.
Davis, who once told supporters she is a “soldier for Christ,” was ordered by U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning on Tuesday to pay attorneys of the couple $260,104 in fees and expenses, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. She previously was ordered by a jury to pay the couple, David Ermold and David Moore, a total of $100,000 in damages. In March of 2022 a federal judge found Davis had violated the couple’s constitutional rights.
While the elected county clerk, Davis was jailed for several days after defying a court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Citing her personal religious beliefs, she had claimed she issued marriage licenses under “God’s authority,” and refused.
“The question is simple — did Davis knowingly violate the law? The answer here is clear — yes,” Judge Bunning wrote in 2022. “Ultimately, this Court’s determination is simple — Davis cannot use her own constitutional rights as a shield to violate the constitutional rights of others while performing her duties as an elected official.”
Granted, this is hardly good news for Kim Davis, but this really is the right way for this story to end; nice to know that at least some level of American government, however low, holds its people accountable if they refuse to uphold the law.
