<p>Why Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis Can't Be Fired for Refusing to Issue Same-Sex Marriage Licenses BY POLLY MOSENDZ 9/4/15 AT 3:37 PM</p><p>Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis is shown in this booking photo provided by the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson, Kentucky September 3. She was released after spending six days in jail for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. CARTER COUNTY DETENTION CENTER/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, spent the night in jail for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. She'll likely spend a few more nights in the slammer because Davis is strongly opposed, for religious reasons, to signing the licenses, even though it is one of her primary job functions to issue them. The ACLU sued Davis on behalf of a same-sex couple to whom she'd denied a license. A judge found in the couple's favor, ruling that Davis must issue the licenses. Davis refused and on Thursday, Judge David L. Bunning of United States District Court held Davis in contempt. He ordered Davis to jail after determining a fine would be paid by supporters and wouldn't change her behavior. But even when Davis is in jail, she's still the clerk. She hasn't been fired, and she hasn't resigned. While her deputy clerks began giving out same-sex marriage licenses on Friday morning, those licenses had to be handed out without her signature. Because of the unusual circumstances in this case, the Rowan County attorney ruled the license is still valid, though it lacks the court clerk's signature. Getting rid of a county clerk isn't easy. Davis is an elected official, so she would have to be impeached by the state legislature. Not even the governor could fire Davis on his own.</p><p>"The future of the Rowan County Clerk is now in the hands of the courts. The legislature has placed the authority to issue marriage licenses squarely on county clerks by statute, and I have no legal authority to relieve her of her statutory duty by executive order or to remove her from office," Governor Steve Beshear explained. "The General Assembly will convene in four months and can make any statutory changes it deems necessary at that time. I see no need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money calling a special session of the General Assembly when 117 of 120 county clerks are doing their jobs."</p><p>Even if a special session were called, the assembly may not agree to impeach her. </p><p>Of course, Davis could just resign. But, according to her lawyer, she apparently isn't interested in doing that. "The tragedy is that there are simple ways to accommodate her convictions. Just remove her name from the marriage licenses. That’s all she has asked from the beginning," Davis's attorney said. She'd like to keep her job under a unique set of circumstances for issuing the licenses. She's seeking a religious exemption to create these circumstances. Thus far, the courts have denied her suggestion. </p><p>Joe Davis, Kim's husband, has made it clear she would not resign. "She won't resign, I promise you. Until something gives, she'll be there," he said. He also added that Bunning is "a butt." Joe and Kim Davis married twice. (The clerk is thrice divorced; she's been married four times total.) Regardless of whether Judge Bunning is or is not "a butt," he made an interesting case against religious exemption after holding Davis in contempt. Bunning said he is a Catholic—he has a history of conservative politics—but "public officials must respect the law." Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis Ordered Released From Jail BY POLLY MOSENDZ 9/8/15 AT 12:59 PM Kim Davis was released from jail on Tuesday afternoon. Davis was jailed after repeatedly refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses in Rowan County, Kentucky, because of her personal religious beliefs. As a county clerk, Davis is obligated to issue marriage licenses and a Supreme Court decision this summer struck down gay marriage bans.</p><p>On August 26th, a U.S. appeals court ruled she must issue the marriage licenses. She refused once more and was sued by the ACLU. The ACLU requested she be held in contempt and fined. The judge agreed Davis should be held in contempt but felt a fine was not a harsh enough punishment for Davis. She was jailed on September 3.</p><p>Davis had six deputy clerks and all but one, her son, agreed to issue licenses to same-sex couples after Davis was jailed. Those clerks issued the first such license last Friday. Because the plaintiffs in the case, a same-sex couple who was previously denied, were able to obtain a license from those clerks, the contempt order can be lifted.</p><p>"The court is...satisfied that the Rowan County Clerk's Office is fulfilling its obligations to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples, consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in Obergefell and this Court's August 12, 2015 Order. For these reasons, the Court's prior contempt sanction against Defendant Davis is hereby lifted," wrote Judge David Bunning. Davis' husband previously called Bunning "a butt" for jailing Davis. A status report reviewed by Bunning found the marriage licenses had been altered to remove Davis' name. On the line reserved for her name, the form instead read "Rowan County." "Plaintiffs have not alleged that the alternations affect the validity of the licenses," Bunning wrote. </p><p>Davis previously requested her name be removed from the licenses. "Just remove her name from the marriage licenses. That’s all she has asked from the beginning," her attorney said in a statement on September 3. </p><p>On Tuesday, Davis was set to be visited by GOP hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz. "Praise God that Kim Davis is being released. It was an outrage that she was imprisoned for six days for living according to her Christian faith," Cruz said in a statement after her release. </p><p>Huckabee joined Davis' attorney in front of the court house for a press conference. He said he would be willing to take her place in jail if need be. "The court order did not resolve the underlying issue," her attorney said. Davis offered no comment. </p><p>How Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis Altered Marriage Licenses BY POLLY MOSENDZ 9/24/15 AT 6:45 AM</p><p>Kentucky clerk Kim Davis may be back in court again soon, as the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky filed a motion this week aiming to enforce previous court orders, which determined the Rowan County clerk must issue same-sex marriage licenses. The ACLU found Davis made four changes to marriage licenses since returning back to work after being jailed for six days for refusing to issue licenses to same-sex couples. After Judge David Bunning released Davis from jail, marriage licenses in Rowan County were altered to remove her name and replace it with the county's name. Her deputy clerks began giving out marriage licenses in the county on September 4. "Plaintiffs have not alleged that the alterations affect the validity of the licenses," Bunning wrote at the time of her release. However, it is not the removal of Davis' name that caused the ACLU to file the motion.</p><p>After returning to work, Davis began to further alter the marriage licenses, according to a notice filed by deputy clerk Brian Mason. According to Mason, Davis created a third version of marriage license: the first was what the county used prior to the Supreme Court's decision to lift state-level gay marriage bans; the second removed her name from the license; and the third made four changes to the license. It is this third version the ACLU takes issue with. One such third license, with the personal information of the couple redacted, was provided toNewsweek: In a court motion, the ACLU says Kim Davis made four changes to Rowan County, Kentucky, marriage licenses. Davis spent six days in jail for refusing to issue licenses to same-sex couples. NEWSWEEK</p><p>The changes to the license include removing the phrase "in the office of" and changing it to "Pursuant to Federal Court Order #15-CV-44-DLB," removing the phrase "County Clerk" and changing it to read "Morehead," and changing Mason's title from deputy clerk to notary public.</p><p>With all of these changes in place, it is possible this third version of the Rowan County marriage license is not actually valid. When Judge Bunning made his ruling, he was presented the second version of the license, with only one change, and determined such a license was legally binding. However, it remains unclear if this third version holds up and the ACLU argues it very well may not. </p><p>Despite this motion, Davis has repeatedly said she would not put her name on a license and said if need be, she will return back to jail. Meeting with Kim Davis has pope-watchers asking, what did Francis mean? By Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey September 30 at 5:57 PM The revelation of a private meeting last week between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, set off a vigorous debate in the United States on Wednesday about what message the popular pontiff may have been trying to send.</p><p>Unlike some of the other private sit-downs during the pope’s trip to the United States and Cuba, the Vatican declined to discuss the session with Davis, whose stance in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling affirming the right to same-sex marriage has made her a hero to some religious conservatives and a villain to many liberal activists.</p><p>“I do not deny that the meeting took place,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said after Davis’s attorney announced it in a news release. “But I have no other comments to add.”</p><p>The mystery further energized the debate over what Francis stands for, barely more than 48 hours after the pope flew home to Rome hailed as a moral authority who refused to be pulled into American culture wars.</p><p>Davis and her husband spent less than 15 minutes with the pope at the Vatican embassy in Washington last Thursday, her attorney, Mat Staver, said in an interview. Staver declined to say who initiated the get-together. He said Davis was already headed to Washington for the Values Voter Summit and arrived a day early in order to accommodate the papal meeting.</p><p>“He held out his hand and she clasped his hands and held them,” said Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, which represents Davis in her legal fight to avoid issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, an act that she says would violate her religious beliefs.</p><p>Staver said the pope and Davis, who was raised Catholic but became an Apostolic Christian four years ago, talked about bravery, then hugged and exchanged promises of prayer.</p><p>“She asked the pope to pray for her, and he said he would pray,” said Staver, who did not attend the meeting but saw Davis shortly afterward. “He said to ‘stay strong.’ ”</p><p>Francis held many private meetings during his six days in the United States, including with victims of sexual abuse and with Little Sisters of the Poor, the order of nuns suing the federal government over the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act. Austen Ivereigh, a prominent Francis biographer, said he found it telling that the meeting with Davis was not publicly revealed until after the pope returned to Rome — and even then, it was Staver who announced it, not the Vatican.</p><p>In contrast, church officials gave details about Francis’s visits with the nuns and the sex-abuse victims shortly after they happened.</p><p>With Davis, “I think the pope didn’t want to get into the specifics of the case,” Ivereigh said. “He wanted only to show support for religious freedom and the right of conscientious objection.”</p><p>The pope was politically careful throughout his U.S. trip, delving into hot-button issues including immigration and climate change but speaking broadly, inclusively and — for the most part — without specifics.</p><p>When he talked about religious freedom, for example, he linked it to nondiscrimination. When he talked about challenges to marriage, he widened the lens to include such issues as unemployment and low wages.</p><p>“I was surprised about how much he knew about the American context, whether it was history or whatever,” said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. “This is a man who did his homework.”</p><p>Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has endeared himself to the LGBT community by meeting with a transgender man in Italy and, when asked about gay priests two years ago, answering, “Who am I to judge?”</p><p>News of Francis’s meeting with Davis exploded on social media, triggering strong reactions from the left and the right.</p><p>“Nooooooo!!!!!! This makes me so angry! So everything he’s preaching is a lie!!!” Alyssa Milano, the former star of “Who’s the Boss?” and “Charmed,” tweeted to her 2.85 million followers.</p><p>Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which aims to build bridges between the LGBT community and the Catholic Church, said the Davis meeting threw a wet blanket over the pope’s U.S. visit.</p><p>“He sometimes talks out of both sides of his mouth,” DeBernardo wrote on his blog. “His remarks on specific moral and political issues are often at odds with his welcoming stance.” Robert George, president of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said he was thrilled to see the pope embrace Davis.</p><p>“I think he would stand up for anybody’s conscience rights, but I think [the meeting] probably increased the pope’s sense of the importance of the issue,” said George, who is Catholic.</p><p>Other prominent players in the religious-freedom movement — the term usually given to people who believe the rights of religious conservatives are threatened by liberal norms — seemed less willing to embrace Davis as a standard-bearer for their cause.</p><p>The Becket Fund, which is providing legal representation to the Little Sisters of the Poor, declined to comment on the pope’s meeting with Davis.</p><p>And Robin Wilson, director of the Family Law and Policy Program at the University of Illinois, said that by refusing to allow her deputies to issue marriage licenses, Davis denied civil rights to others even as she tried to protect her own.</p><p>“The pope intimated that this is a matter of conscientious objection, but it’s more complicated than that,” said Wilson, who was in Kentucky on Wednesday talking with lawmakers about how to find a compromise between gay rights and religious liberties. “What the pope should have said was: Of course she can keep her job and should be allowed to step aside over issues where there is a deep religious conviction. But she can’t deny others their civil rights, too.”</p><p>A Vatican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it would be rare for the Vatican to have initiated such a meeting, and added that it was likely suggested by “someone familiar with the Davis case and who enjoys the trust of the Holy Father.”</p><p>“Let’s not read too much into this,” the official said. “The meeting should not be understood as a blanket endorsement of the pope for all the things that Kim Davis says or does. Instead, it should be read as the support of the Holy Father for the right to conscientious objection.”</p><p>The Rev. James Martin, editor at large of America magazine, made a similar point online Wednesday.</p><p>“Not to put too fine a point on it, but Pope Francis also met [actor] Mark Wahlberg, and that does not mean that he liked ‘Ted.’ ”</p>