God save us from religious crackpots, hypocrites

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/09/2015 (3396 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kim Davis is an unlikely martyr. Mind you, in reality she’s more a bully than a martyr, but the Kentucky clerk who refuses to grant marriage licences to same-sex couples is rapidly becoming the pin-up girl for the Christian right and hardline Republicans. Her stubborn refusal to obey the law led to several warnings and eventually to incarceration, but we’ve certainly not seen the last of this sorry story.

She justifies her actions because, she explains, she is a Christian. The problem is that when it comes to biblical reasoning she’s on desperately shaky ground. Modern theologians have increasingly urged a radically different interpretation of same-sex relationships and even many of those who hold to a more traditional interpretation still believe Davis is putting prejudice before faith. On a more personal level, while Jesus never mentions homosexuality, He does repeatedly condemn divorce. Davis has been divorced three times! That, and her unfaithfulness to one of her husbands, does rather tarnish her case.

In terms of freedom of religion she has a perfect right to oppose equal marriage but that’s not the point. She is an agent of the state, a public official, and has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. As such, Davis’s elected position is to defend and administer the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and her refusal to do so says a great deal about how much weight she gives to the oath she took when she was sworn into office.

More than this, as a representative of the state she works for an entity that is a direct alternative to the church. The separation of church and state is a fundamental principle of American political and judicial culture, yet in the name of American patriotism she tosses it aside as though it were irrelevant.

She could easily have resigned her position in protest at the equal marriage decision and even protested outside of the building where she had recently worked. That, however, would have involved abandoning a lucrative position in a comfortable, air-conditioned office and may not have led to the same degree of publicity she is now enjoying. Let’s not be naive here: Davis is already a hero to many, is lionized by the Christian right and many extreme conservatives, and I’d be stunned if a book deal and a major speaking tour to evangelical churches didn’t materialize.

This is not a woman’s religious rights being denied but a woman using her religion to deny the rights of other people. Some of the gay couples she so rudely and illegally refused to serve were also Christians, as are millions of people who not only embrace equal marriage and gay rights but also regard Davis as more a Pharisee than a disciple.

Some of the layers of hypocrisy here are mud-thick. Most of her supporters are strident law-and-order types who routinely call for longer prison sentences for criminals. In this case, though, they think someone who clearly and brazenly broke the law is being treated too harshly.

Then we have political manipulators such as Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee arguing she is a victim of Christian persecution. Huckabee is the man who defended TV “personality” Josh Duggar after it was revealed he had sexually abused his sisters, and accused U.S. President Barack Obama of leading Jews to gas chambers. Is there nothing they will not say or do to appeal to the political basement?

Perhaps most troubling of all is how Kim Davis’s people have compared her to champions of the black civil rights movement such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. No! Those men and women battled for equality, Davis advocates inequality; they risked and even gave their lives for inclusion; she risks nothing and her campaign is for exclusion.

As a Christian, I cringe at the sight of the over-fed mobs outside of the Kentucky courthouse and prison waving their strange flags and holding their often misspelled signs. They compare the U.S. with Iran when it is they, and not the Supreme Court, who more resemble the ayatollahs. They scream and shout platitudes about sin and perversion while hysterically rejecting Jesus’s central commands to love, listen, empathize and to never judge.

Religious freedom is essential and sacred but that does not mean that religious belief usurps civil and criminal law. That way leads to theocracy — and God save us from that.

Author and columnist Michael Coren can be contacted atmcoren@sympatico.ca