Kim Davis
Kimberly Jean Davis (née Bailey; born September 17, 1965) is an American former county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky, who gained international attention in August 2015 when she defied a U.S. federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
For other people named Kim Davis, see Kim Davis (disambiguation).
Kim Davis
Jean W. Bailey
Elwood Caudill Jr.
- Democratic (1983–2015)
- Republican (after 2015)[1]
Joe Davis
4
Refusal to comply with a federal court order directing her to issue marriage licenses following Obergefell v. Hodges
Davis was elected Rowan County Clerk in 2014. The following year, 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.[2][3] 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";[2] she was ultimately jailed for contempt of court due to her refusal "to not interfere with her deputies issuing marriage licenses for gay couples." Speaking on Davis' behalf, her "attorney said Davis 'would not make any representation' that she would allow marriage licenses to be issued, thus not accepting the compromise that would have led to her release.".[4][5] 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's 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",[6] while law professor Eugene Volokh maintained that an employer must try to accommodate religious employees' beliefs. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that Davis's imprisonment was part of the "criminalization of Christianity",[7] while Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin compared Davis's 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. She was defeated by Democratic challenger Elwood Caudill Jr. in the November 6, 2018, election and vacated the office on January 7, 2019.
Reelection campaign[edit]
Davis announced that she would run for reelection in 2018 as a Republican.[190] Davis did not face any challengers in the Republican primary. Four Democrats ran in the May 2018 primary with the winner being Rowan County Assistant Property Valuation Administrator Elwood Caudill Jr., whom Davis narrowly defeated in the Democratic primary in 2014.[191][192] One of the Democrats Caudill defeated was David Ermold, who had been denied a marriage license by Davis and then filed suit against her.[193][194] Davis lost her reelection campaign on November 6, 2018, when she was defeated by Caudill in the general election by a little over 8 percentage points.[195][196]
Personal life[edit]
Davis has been married four times to three husbands.[20][197] The first three marriages ended in divorce in 1994, 2006, and 2008. Davis has two daughters from her first marriage and twins, a son and another daughter, who were born five months after her divorce from her first husband. Her third husband is the biological father of the twins, the children being conceived while Davis was still married to her first husband. The twins were adopted by Davis's current husband, Joe Davis, who was also her second husband; the couple initially divorced in 2006 but later remarried.[8][61] Joe Davis has also stated his support for her stance against same-sex marriage.[60] Davis's son Nathan works in her office as a deputy clerk and has taken the same position of denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples.[198] Shortly after the same-sex marriage license controversy, Davis said she and her husband switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.[1]
Davis says she experienced a religious awakening in 2011, following her mother-in-law's dying wish that she attend church.[15] Since then Davis has identified herself as a Christian, belonging to the Apostolic Pentecostal movement,[199] which favors what they describe as a literal interpretation of the Bible.[200] She worships three times a week[201] at the Solid Rock Apostolic Church near Morehead.[15][202] Following her conversion, Davis let her hair grow long, stopped wearing makeup and jewelry, and began wearing skirts and dresses that fall below the knee, in keeping with Apostolic Pentecostal tenets regarding outward holiness and modest dress.[99][202] She also held a weekly Bible study for female inmates at the local jail.[15][202] In an interview in January 2016, Davis said that she believed that "we are living in end times."[203] Davis also expressed her view that the Bible is infallible.[203]
Popular culture and public response[edit]
Davis was the subject of numerous satirical works following the burst of media attention in 2015. Books, social media profiles, and videos were created to satirize her refusal to issue marriage licenses. A Twitter account which once had more than 90,000 followers and is run by comedian Dave Colan trolled Davis with mocking tweets purporting to be from a woman who "Sits Next to Kim Davis".[204][205][206] Funny or Die made a Mashup video featuring characters from Parks and Recreation that spoofs Davis's refusal to issue marriage licenses[207][208] and parodies her meeting with Pope Francis.[209] La Strega Entertainment created a satirical music video sung to the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.[210] Saturday Night Live cast member Aidy Bryant portrayed Davis during the show's season 41 premiere.[211][212] Actress Jennifer Lawrence, in the December 2015 issue of Vogue, told Jonathan Van Meter that Kim Davis is a "lady that makes me embarrassed to be from Kentucky."[213][214][215]
In 2015, her office claims to have received death threats by phone and email, including an ex-Marine who called saying he would attack them with a machine gun.[216] In response, the sheriff's office took a position near the doorway of the office and Davis changed her driving routes and parking locations. She also had to change her home phone number.[216] She later reflected "It was a very volatile time. The threats were nonstop. The lashing out and the venom spewed toward me was, I mean, I blushed just reading some of the stuff. Just think 'eww' you know. And I've received things in the mail that were ungodly."[216] She stayed off social media and did not watch the news or any of the interviews or "read any of the stuff they wrote about me, which was some nasty stuff."[216]
She reflected, "And I just, I knew that no matter what the bad was, that the good definitely just
outweighed it a thousand to one."[216]