A Kentucky county clerk is fighting back after being sued for refusing to issue marriage licenses to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples in the wake of the Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage.
On Tuesday, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis filed a lawsuit against Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, accusing him of infringing on her religious freedom for not allowing her and other officials to opt out of issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples if they feel morally opposed to marriage equality, The Lexington Herald-Leader reports.
Davis, who is reportedly a Apostolic Christian and attends church three times a week, claimed in the lawsuit that Beshear has made officials such as herself vulnerable to lawsuits by requiring them to obey the Supreme Court's June 26 ruling. Davis argued that the governor be held accountable for any damages that may be incurred in the ongoing lawsuit brought against her by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of two gay couples and two straight couples after she refused to issue them marriage licenses.
The governor is "forcing clerks like Davis to choose between following the precepts of her religion and forfeiting her position, on one hand, and abandoning one of the precepts of her religion in order to keep her position, on the other hand," a copy of the lawsuit cited by the Associated Press reads.
Davis, who has been a deputy clerk in Rowan for 27 years, testified last month that she “prayed and fasted” before ultimately deciding to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Meanwhile, Beshear's spokesman Terry Sebastian responded to the suit in a statement cited by The Courier-Journal, which said that Davis "doesn’t understand the interrelationship between the governor, the attorney general, the county clerks and the legislature." The governor, he said, has no legal authority over county clerks, and his instructions to them on same-sex marriage merely “advised” them of their obligations to issue marriage licenses to all applicants, regardless of sexual orientation.
A lawyer for the couples who are suing Davis was even more to the point, arguing that the clerk is hypocritically portraying herself as a victim of discrimination, according to The Lexington Herald-Leader.
"She swore in her oath of office to uphold the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has decided what the Constitution says here," Joe Dunman said. "She doesn't get to ignore it just because she doesn't like it."
