Kim Davis

Kim Davis is in jail for breaking the law.

If you are a Christian, you do not think this says anything conclusive about Kim Davis morally, because many people end up in jail for doing the right thing as the long history of American civil disobedience demonstrates. Other people win prizes for doing the wrong thing who should be in jail as executives at Planned Parenthood and some US banks also prove every day.

What about Davis?

She is a Christian, maybe an imperfect one, but a Christian. Nobody can be a Christian if their religion is confined to the walls of the church. Christianity is what guides a person in all their life decisions, not just a rooting interest like picking a sport’s team.

Kim Davis rightly knows that it is wrong to call immorality moral or to give state support to vice.

Of course, when a person runs a business, he often does not know what a customer is going to do with what he buys. The man who buys rat poison in the store may be off to kill rats or he may be using it to commit murder. A moral man should not sell the poison if he knows or even suspects immoral purposes, but he doesn’t have to give each customer a quiz.

A reasonable owner can assume good will in most people and so does business. If a customer announces that he or she intends to do evil, then a Christian would refuse to serve that goal or sell the product. It is one thing to bake a cake that turns out to be for a bad marriage and another thing to know that it celebrates vice.

The Supreme Court unjustly decided to change the definition of marriage and so now the state gives immorality a position that defies the laws of nature and of nature’s God. As a Christian, I believe in the rule of law, but the primary law is the law of God and not of government. As Thomas Beckett gave his life to demonstrate, Christians obey the government only when the laws harmonize with the laws of God. There is no gay marriage, because government cannot call “good” what God calls wicked.

Davis was elected by the people in her community and has chosen not to resign. She will not enforce an unjust and wicked law. The people of her community have the right to vote her out of office in the next election. She ordered her office to ignore the unjust law.

Most of this present government and establishment does not agree with Kim Davis and so Davis is in jail. She is paying the price for her disobedience and now her community will decide if they wish to keep her in office or keep her in jail.

Why is this one tiny act of defiance getting so much attention? At least a large minority of Americans (a majority in some areas) think the Court has gone too far and called evil good. If more Americans called on to enforce this unjust law refused, the Court would be powerless to enforce the law and Americans who support gay marriage know this is true.

If enough government workers in America just said “no,” then the one-size-fits-all solution the government forced on the nation would die. There would be no civil war . . . there would just be regions of the country with effectively different marriage laws. In other words, the world would be just as it was before the Court told all government workers in all jurisdictions they had to marry people who cannot be married.

Kim Davis is acting as Americans have always acted in the face of unjust laws. She is within the mainstream of the Christian tradition. We have long acknowledged that obeying unjust laws is no excuse for directly aiding immorality.

A pacifist Christian (and most Christians have never been pacifists) cannot vote for a war or participate in killing. Our majority culture generally has provided for “conscientious objectors” and not forced all those people out of all forms of government service. A Christian who thinks “swearing” is always wrong cannot take an oath even when the government commands it. The Founders of America accommodated those who would serve the state by allowing them not to “swear” an oath. The Supreme Court allowed no state, region, or territory any exemption from the Supreme Court’s morality. All parts of government must pretend that vice is equal to virtue. The rules changed while Davis was in office. National morality shifted in a day, but her own morality did not.

Generally, a government clerk does not and should not intrude on the details of people’s request for a marriage license. He or she does not know if the marriage is good or bad. A good clerk would not (of course) give license to licentiousness knowingly, but it is not her place to ask. In this case, however, the Christian clerk knows that the persons before her seek a license to sin.

She is right to refuse.

This leaves only a prudential argument. Is she right not to resign?

Is this the right fight at the right time? Is it a hopeful defiance? If this cause has been utterly lost, perhaps a traditional Christian will no longer be able to be a clerk. We have been banned from the job. Clerks, I am sure, gave marriage licenses to bad people last year. But last year, we did not have to give government license to people we knew were going to be bad. No government employee, after all, should give a gun license to somebody they knew would do bad things with the gun . . . even if the government told them to do so.

The reaction to Davis is overwhelmingly negative in establishment media right and left, but there is a ground swell of support for her from a sizeable minority. If millions defy the government, especially government officials, even if they are tiny minority, the law must change. We cannot have a national law that millions will not obey as our marijuana bans have proven. We try to enforce a ban that is ignored in some areas, randomly enforced in others, and consistently practiced in others. The law has broken down and so is changing or will soon change to a regional one.

The Supreme Court has spoken, but as Houstonian democrats might respond: the people have not yet finished the conversation. Kim Davis is testing whether there exists a sizable minority in and out of government that will not obey this unjust law. I would not have picked this issue, at this place, at this time. I would have resigned guessing that there exists no minority with the staying power to make a sacrifice worthwhile. Kim Davis did not agree and millions seem to agree with her. If they continue to stand by her, the Republic will have to find a new compromise on this issue.

Five justices on the Supreme Court made the decision that the American public would allow them to say what had been immoral for most of American history is moral. No Court in a republic can or should ignore whether a decision can be enforced. Making otherwise moral people scofflaws is corrosive to the Court’s power. The Court bet the nation would be eith them and give their consent to be governed by this change.

Kim Davis is about to show us whether the Court’s decision can stand.