I Blame Stephen King

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

     That's right. I blame the Master of Horror.

     How else can one explain what happened in Rowan County, Kentucky except to say this is a horrid example of life imitating art when an obscure hillbilly clerk in rompers and jumpers who gives people cultural flashbacks of Kathy Bates in Misery gets to literally dictate for an entire summer to an entire county that they can't get married?

     And why did it take so long for Kim Davis to get thrown in jail for contempt of court when the Supreme Court had ruled last June 26th to strike down gay marriage bans across the nation?

     When minor county officials play Savonarola and indefinitely get to decide who gets married and who doesn't based on their personal religious beliefs, a holier-than-thou mindset that seems to come part and parcel with "being saved", while unarmed people are literally being killed during marijuana raids, medical emergency calls and routine traffic stops, there is something seriously fucked up with this nation's priorities.

     And as Edgar Allen Poe presciently foresaw the events in "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", Stephen King dipped into his intellectual haversack looking for the ultimate, evangelical right wing lunatic and prophetically gave us Kim Davis, the four-times-married nut job who essentially hobbled the marriage plans of all of Rowan County, KY.
     And now, placard-carrying canvas tent refugees amassed outside the jail where Davis is incarcerated are comparing her to Rosa Parks. If they want to compare Kim Davis to anyone, make it the bus driver who tried to force Rosa Parks to sit in the back of the bus.

     You're Not Allowed to Make the Same Mistakes I Did

     Assuming marrying your partner of 17 years is a mistake, what Kim Davis was telling gay couples who came to the courthouse in Rowan County with the reasonable expectation she would do her job was they were not allowed to commit similar transgressions against the law of God. In doing so, Davis flew in the face of the law of man, completely forgetting, or completely indifferent to the fact, that the US Constitution trumps everything, including the so-called word of God.

     As is often the case (And yes, Rush Limbaugh, You of the Four Marriages of Your Own, I'm looking in your direction), these edicts and exercises of petty power are made by those who have made a complete mockery of so-called traditional marriage. In Davis' case, not only was she married four times, while married to husband #1, she gave birth to twins fathered by future husband #3 who were adopted by future husband #2. One has no idea what relationship Davis' children have with current husband #4.

     And even though Davis appears to have lived her life according to the Bristol Palin School of Modesty and Abstinence, cheaply slut-shaming this obvious trailer park white trash isn't the thrust of this essay. What is is Davis openly flouting the law by pitifully insisting God's so-called laws trump those that count, which are the laws of Man.
     Because, after all, according to the saying, we are a nation of laws, not men. Not women. And certainly not gods.
     And it did not matter to Kim Davis that she placed her co-workers and subordinates in a state of terror, in which they were actually scared to walk into a courthouse and go to work. It did not matter she made her county a national laughingstock as effectively as she had traditional marriage. If anything it could be said she reveled in the attention given to her as her tiny office was choked every day with journalists recording her every insipid word to frustrated same sex couples.
     No doubt, as her homophobic misactions ingeniously placed her within arm's reach of the lesbians of Rowan County's penal system, she's no doubt reveling in her martyred status, perfectly delineated by the teary-eyed, Poor Me persecuted look in her mug shot.
     Kim Davis was not persecuted for her religious beliefs. She was jailed as should anyone who breaks the law, especially a public official who takes an oath to obey the law then refuses to at the first available opportunity.