From Joe Davis, explaining why his wife, the clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, refuses to issue marriage licenses to gay couples:
Just because five Supreme Court judges make a ruling, it’s not a law.
Actually, yes, it is. But Joe could be excused for thinking otherwise given how many allegedly serious Republican presidential candidates seem to agree with him.
In any case, this affair has now ended in what always seemed the most obvious way: with LGBT couples getting marriage licenses from deputies in the county clerk’s office. Kim Davis still objects to this, of course, because her name is on the license (by state law). But her deputies apparently aren’t as keen on twiddling their thumbs in the county jail as she is. They had to decide whether to obey Davis or obey a federal judge, and they wisely chose to obey the judge.
In theory, this is now over. But Davis remains in jail, all the better to assure her future role as a martyr for the cause and poster child for fundraising appeals by the right-wing email outrage crowd. I imagine she’ll stay there just long enough to cement her reputation, and then announce that she’s resigning her office. Her moment in the sun is nearly over, but her moment on the rubber chicken circuit is just beginning.
