Thursday, August 06, 2015

Anti-gay right lie about marriage equality & the church, attempt to undermine it in the secular square

Kim Davis trying to undermine marriage equality

Pay attention, folks. As dubious as this case is,  I am willing to bet that it will be the one the anti-gay industry will attempt to take all the way to SCOTUS:

A Kentucky clerk, sued for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has filed her own lawsuit against the governor, claiming he trampled her religious freedom by telling all clerks that they must either issue licenses or resign.

On June 26, the day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled gay marriage bans unconstitutional, Gov. Steve Beshear directed the state’s 120 county clerks to comply and begin issuing licenses to all couples. Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis filed the federal lawsuit against Beshear on Tuesday, alleging that the directive violated her “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Davis and several other clerks refused to issue licenses, and 17 sent signed letters of protest to Beshear’s office. The governor maintained they must either adhere to the Supreme Court’s ruling or step aside.

Four couples sued Davis last month after she denied them licenses.

The conservative law firm Liberty Counsel filed a third-party lawsuit on Davis’ behalf, claiming that the governor should be liable for the couples’ claims against her. She also asked the judge to force Beshear to find a way to accommodate her Christian conviction that limits marriage to a union between a man and a woman.

This situation has me thinking about how slick anti-gay activists are. While some of them, such as Rick Scarborough and Mike Huckabee are falsely claiming that marriage equality will lead churches and ministers to be forced to marry gay couples (a lie helped along by Fox News ), anti-gay organizations like the Liberty Counsel are actively attempting to undermine it in the secular sphere by pushing "religious beliefs" of individual government officials into the mix.

Besides fighting these small brush fires, the lgbt community should call attention to the overall goal of all of this nonsense. Religious liberty is merely the excuse used by anti-gay groups to undermine and possibly eventually reverse marriage equality.

Sitting on your behind claiming that it will never happen is probably exactly the thing which will make IT happen.

No comments: