The fourth day dawned on the incarceration of Rowan Country Clerk Democrat Kim Davis who has been jailed by Federal Judge David Bunning for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Though her office began issuing licenses after her jailing on Thursday, Davis says, without her permission as the duly elected County Clerk, the licenses are not valid. She says, “They are not worth the paper they’re written on.”
Davis has vowed to stay in jail indefinitely in defense of her Christian belief that marriage can only ever occur between a man and a woman. Judge David Bunning could have fined her but chose instead the more draconian decision to jail her.
Bunning, a George W. Bush appointee, is no stranger to aggressively siding with gays over such issues.
In a 2003 case, Bunning not only forced a local school board to allow a “gay-straight alliance” to organize and meet in a local high school, as part of his decision he forced all faculty and students to undergo re-education about homosexuality. Further, he ordered that no one could opt out of the re-education even if they had sincere religious beliefs on the matter.
Bunning contended that “Plaintiffs are not requesting that a student absent from the training be considered an ‘excused’ or that the Board offer an alternate assignment on the issue of diversity. Rather, they seek to opt-out of the training altogether,” Bunning wrote.
In ordering that no student be allowed to opt out, Bunning wrote, “Moreover, as there is no burden on plaintiffs’ freedom of speech, free exercise or other constitutional right, there is simply no basis for an opt-out.”
He wrote, “If all parents had a fundamental constitutional right to dictate individually what the schools teach their children, the schools would be forced to cater a curriculum for each student whose parents had genuine moral disagreements with the school’s choice of subject matter.”
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals later overruled Bunning.
Davis’s attorneys at the public interest Liberty Counsel are seeking to overrule Bunning in his sentencing of Davis.
Follow Austin Ruse on Twitter @austinruse
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