Kim Davis

Kim Davis

Kimberly Jean Davis (née Bailey; born September 17, 1965) is the outgoing county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky. Davis gained international attention in August 2015 when she defied a U.S. federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She was defeated by Democratic challenger Elwood Caudill Jr. in the November 6, 2018 election and will vacate the office on January 7, 2019. Davis was elected Rowan County Clerk in 2014. A few months later, the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges, and all county clerks in Kentucky were ordered to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Citing personal religious objections to same-sex marriage, Davis began denying marriage licenses to all couples to avoid issuing them to same-sex couples. A lawsuit, Miller v. Davis, was filed, and Davis was ordered by the U.S. District Court to start issuing marriage licenses. She appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the application to appeal was denied. Davis continued to defy the court order by refusing to issue marriage licenses "under God's authority"; she was ultimately jailed for contempt of court. Davis was released after five days in jail under the condition that she not interfere with the efforts of her deputy clerks, who had begun issuing marriage licenses to all couples in her absence. Davis then modified the Kentucky marriage licenses used in her office so that they no longer mentioned her name. Davis' actions drew strong and mixed reactions from prominent politicians, legal experts, and religious leaders. Attorney and author Roberta A. Kaplan described Davis as "the clearest example of someone who wants to use a religious liberty argument to discriminate", while law professor Eugene Volokh maintained that an employer must try to accommodate religious employees' beliefs. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that Davis' imprisonment was part of the "criminalization of Christianity", while conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin compared Davis' refusal to obey the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to Alabama Governor George Wallace's "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" in 1963. A few weeks after her release from jail, Davis met with Pope Francis in Washington, D.C. The Holy See Press Office later noted that the pope met with many others and said that the meeting was not a form of support for Davis' actions. Davis has been satirized in popular culture; she was parodied in a Funny or Die video, as well as on Saturday Night Live.

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