Friday, March 29, AD 2024 8:32am

Burn Kim Davis

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In a Swiftian proposal at The Week, Michael Brendan Dougherty suggests a punishment for Kim Davis, currently released by the Federal Judge who jailed her due to her deputies issuing licenses to gays to marriage, something Kim Davis has vowed to halt:

 

The Supreme Court had to know it would come to this. It had to know that in taking away the authority of states and the people to define marriage as a conjugal union, some force would be necessary to compel obedience.

A conflict about religious liberty and the authority of the state was bound to happen around marriage issues, just as it did nearly five centuries ago during the Reformation. Whatever we say about the separation of church and state, marriage is an institution that acts as a bridge between them. Religious institutions define the moral purpose and eligibility for marriage, while the state used juridical power to guarantee that stability of the institution.

So it’s not a surprise that Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which redefined marriage nationwide to include same-sex couples, reads more like a religious confession than a legal opinion. Instead of concerning itself with merely the legal consequences of marriage, it reaches outward to commend people to its “transcendent purposes” and “highest meaning.” It projected backward the true meaning of the 14th Amendment based on developments in psychology a century later, just the way religious scholars read Old Testament prophecies in light of the new. It offered miraculous contradictions of the evidence of our eyes by saying that legal developments in recent centuries represent new insights, and “[t]hese new insights have strengthened, not weakened, the institution of marriage.” It also offered an incorrect story of the entire history of the institution:

For example, marriage was once viewed as an arrangement by the couple’s parents based on political, religious, and financial concerns; but by the time of the Nation’s founding it was understood to be a voluntary contract between a man and a woman.

It also, like a 13th century papal bull, constricted the rights of non-conformists, when it assured religious believers that they may “advocate” for their beliefs and believe them, just not act on them and exercise them in the public square.

Kennedy’s decision is only the latest in a long series of decisions in which the state progressively usurps the role of religion in defining the eligibility of individuals, moral purpose, eschatological meaning, and “transcendent purpose” for the institution of marriage. Notice even the subtle way the Griswold decision evokes but revises marriage indissolubility. “Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.” (Emphasis mine.) Davis’ protest, however confused about the legal consequences it risks, is properly understood as a religious one.

So let me suggest, modestly, that instead of the National Guard or a jail cell, she should be handed a more properly religious punishment, one that honors America’s evolving understanding of the separation of church and state. Before the sentence for contempt was handed down, Brian Beutler wrote in The New Republic that “she should be put behind bars until she relents one way or another.”

Any attempt to force her hand risks making her a bigger martyr on the religious right than she already is, but that risk is small compared to the risk that allowing her to continue abusing her power without consequence will create a terrible precedent. There are surely other religious clerks in the South and elsewhere who’d love to get away with discriminating against gays and lesbians, in defiance of the country’s highest court. [The New Republic]

What Beutler advocates here is making of Davis a “fearful example,” often used to compel conformity in doctrine. He’s after people’s hearts, hoping to change those who would dissent. But he doesn’t go far enough.

True, no GoFundMe campaign can restore days of life lost in a jail cell. But Davis has already indicated that jail is nothing to her compared to serving God. She’s just sitting there with the approval of her conscience!

And besides, many think that putting Davis in jail risks exciting sympathy for her and a viral donation campaign that will ultimately reward her for her intransigence. The conclusion is obvious.

Any normal punishment rewards her with the comfort of solidarity from right-wing Christians, or her own sense of moral self-approval. Therefore the only way to avoid granting her such “martyrdom” is to actually martyr her. That’s the really perverse thing about Christians who make a spectacle like this. The only way the state can really punish them is to inform them that their suffering is meaningless and proving that God doesn’t exist by sending them to the darkness of oblivion in torment. Justice Kennedy has issued his theological bull; let Kentucky officials in defiance of it be put on a pyre.

Go here to read the rest.  Whenever a Supreme Court majority decides to place its judicial thumb on the Scales of Justice, and, in defiance of the Constitution, read into that document something that manifestly is not there in order to enact a policy preference favored by the majority, it relies on something in others that the majority does not possess:  respect for the rule of law.  As it becomes clearer to most Americans that when it comes to the Constitution the Court now is not interpreting the Constitution but making a new one piece by piece, resistance like that of Kim Davis will become more common and so the Federal Courts will have to increasingly go into the martyr making business in order to enforce their edicts.  The times just got a lot more interesting.

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Father of seven
Father of seven
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 5:22am

Maybe our bishops can learn something from Kim Davis.

DonL
DonL
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 6:55am

“….the comfort of solidarity from “right-wing Christians”

Can there ever exist such a hybrid as a “left-wing” Christian?
The idea that true Christianity can licitly embrace the many evils immutably bonded in the soul and bowels of the “left-wing,” without corrupting the admonition directly from Christ that we are “either with him or against him” is not only absurd, but demonic.
There can be no moral equivalency between grave evil and good, regardless of the seductive word-smithing of the left.
On the other hand, “right-wing” also reeks of it’s own lesser brand of corruption of the good.

Philip
Philip
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 7:05am

Father of seven.

I hope the Bishops do learn something, but I’m wondering how important they view their Grant $ from the Fed’s, and that relationship, vs. speaking out on issues which could jeopardize said relationship?

What if the government and the church did not commingle fund’s? I’m naive about these matters… but I am curious. What is the gain vs loss if the church didn’t get these Grant’s?

Would She better at proclaiming the Truth or would many thousands of people suffer losses that Catholic Charities provides?

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 8:14am

“….the comfort of solidarity from “right-wing Christians”. Can there ever exist such a hybrid as a “left-wing” Christian?

Another time, another place. At a time when the Church was fairly self-confident and vigorous in the propagation of its views, a particular take on political economy as a counter-point to views derived from Marxism might have merited the moniker. We have not lived in that world for nearly 60 years.

Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 10:08am

The homosexual activitists and their liberal heterosexual supporters will eventually demand the execution of people advocating traditional marriage. They have to make that demand because not doing so means that people who try to live in conformity to the Gospel are a constant pricking of the conscience that cannot ever be tolerated. Then will come the need for a Maccabean response. Like it or not, there is a reason why God nuked Sodom and Gomorrah. Of course I neither advocate nor want that to happen, but the truth is this: the cancer of sterile sexual perversion has to be either conquered by an all powerful medicine or excised by the surgical knife. It is either us or them, and they will not tolerate our freedom to practice our beliefs in the public square. Didn’t something like this happen about a century and a half ago when the Supreme Court back then made another bone-headed, dumb-stupid-idiot decision?

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 10:54am

Oh, I imagine the gaystapo and their puppy dogs in the legal profession will favor the Singapore solution where anyone who stands in their way faces bankrupting civil suits.

We’ve reached a point where it’s time for the elected officials to open up that can of whoop-ass. Let’s see if they have the cojones.

Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 11:08am

Have you noticed that the main stream news media isn’t talking much about Kim davis any longer? Apparently making her a visible martyr has backfired on them.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 11:44am

Art Deco: “We’ve reached a point where it’s time for the elected officials to open up that can of whoop-ass. Let’s see if they have the cojones.”
Speaking of whoop-as, sodomy is a pain in one’s whoop-as. Speaking of “cojones”, the Supreme Court in Obergefell nixed all “cojones” and made verbal eunuchs of all citizens by imposing a “no-gender” marriage. A “no-gender” marriage removes the testimony of the gay agenda that lust is love and sodomy is the marital act. Without testicles, the testimony carries no weight. A “no-gender ” marriage will not bring forth our constitutional posterity. This is treason against our Preamble. Verbal spaying of the nation is treason against the people. Verbal castrating of the people is unconstitutional.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 11:52am

Removing the acknowledgement of God and the acknowledgement of the person’s immortal, human soul, free will, intellect and all unalienable human rights by redefining the human person as having “no gender” is the imposition of atheism by the Court. “or prohibit the free exercise thereof” is the First Amendment not to be contradicted by any insinuation of the Fourteenth Amendment that man has “no gender”, A “no gender” person invented by the Court does not exist.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 11:53am

Atheism and the imposition of atheism is unconstitutional.

trackback
Wednesday, September 9, AD 2015 11:01pm

[…] The Story Behind the Synod’s Final Document – Edward Pentin, The Cthlc World Report Burn Kim Davis – Donald R. McClarey J. D., The American Catholic Compare & Contrast Annulment Processing […]

eddie too
eddie too
Monday, September 14, AD 2015 4:38pm

I read elsewhere (on the internet so I pass it on with a reader beware notice) that Kentucky law requires marriage licenses to be issued in the county of the bride’s home. that is the law kim davis swore to follow in her oath of office. that makes it impossible to follow the law and issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple.

until the Kentucky legislature reviews and amends all aspects of its current law, Kentucky has no law governing same-sex marriage. it does still have a law governing marriage between a man and a woman.

so, according to the five judicial tyrants, the constitution requires same-sex marriage; but, the laws of the state of Kentucky do not.

importantly, the constitution does not provide anyone with how the laws governing marriage must be written. nor does the constitution have any language to govern marriage.

Philip
Philip
Monday, September 14, AD 2015 4:56pm

eddie too.

Hummm. Origin of the bride’s home.
Good find.
Bride? Really?
I’m just not sensitive to the plight of the sodomites.

To the plight of the repenting homosexual, yes.
CourageRC.org. you bet!

The time is nearing when our brothers must decide for God or self. That time is nearing for all of us. Thank God for our Holy Catholic Church. The church that doesn’t change to the whims of the culture… Since God doesn’t change!

Mary De Voe
Monday, September 14, AD 2015 6:33pm

The Catholic Church is afraid that if it speaks out it will lose its tax exempt status, and probably be harassed by the government. And the church is correct. Think Lois Lerner. Kim Davis is going to jail but Hillary Clinton who is taking away our “deep seated cultural codes and religious beliefs” to accommodate human sacrifice, has just been cleared as she had the authority to remove classified email from her server.
Taxes are paid by the parishioners. The church’s holding are held in trust for all future generations. Donations, gifts and behests are tax free for everyone. Separation of church and state forbids the state from making any laws pertaining to the church. Read Thomas Jefferson’ letter to the Danbury Baptist Church wherein Jefferson reaffirms man’s conscience. This Supreme Court would put George Washington in jail.

Don L
Don L
Tuesday, September 15, AD 2015 6:58am

“The Catholic Church is afraid that if it speaks out it will lose its tax exempt status,”
How many ways can you spell(thirty pieces of silver)?

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