My partner and I were once walking to Findlay Market from the spooky end of Green Street. We held hands as we neared the market. A scruffy, possibly homeless, black man approached. I made eye contact with him.
At first, he spoke amicably.
Until he saw that we were hand in hand.
“None of that!” he said, like somebody’s stern father. “That ain’t what God intended!”
In our surprise, we didn’t know whether to laugh, run or curse him.
“Hey!” I clapped back. “Mind your business and don’t be disrespectful.” He walked away, grumbling and complaining. We did the same, shocked that someone so clearly with larger issues could have the audacity to comment on our small display of mindless affection.
My first thought was: How can a man so isolated, so on the fringe of what most consider societal norms, who probably cannot keep a fixed address and who cannot properly feed or clean himself, be so judgmental about my sexuality? Was this a case of someone with so little control in his own life trying to exert control over people he sees as somehow morally beneath him?
Talk about beneath the underdog. Truth is, if any of us living “alternatively” had more surprise attacks/encounters like this we’d feel the heat of intolerance from people in the rank-and-file — including and especially the fringe dwellers.
We take our assumed and perceived personal freedoms for granted. We are offensive to highly moral people in the lowliest places.
As the news of the dour-faced Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis grows increasingly strange and ironic, I thought back to our side street encounter with our indigent moral police officer who appeared on the landscape like a mouthy zombie.
Now the woman who created a loophole for her God-based bigotry by refusing to issue marriage licenses to any couple — at the risk of being accused of the bigotry she displays — is a martyr to the like-mined hill people who can now safely show their faces and bare their myopia in the light of day. They are just like the believers — without the blind faith, oils and spices — who held vigil outside Jesus’ tomb after the crucifixion. Only, along with singing, praying and proselytizing, Davis’ followers are adept at finding national news outlets to speak to, giving the world its fair share of hillbilly sound bytes of intolerance about God and “what’s right.”
Sadly, because she was elected, Davis cannot be fired like you or I would be if we defied our job descriptions and refused to serve the tax-paying public in the commission of our fundamental job duties.
She can only be impeached. Where, oh where is Ken Starr when you really need him?
So while the law figures out to whom this hot potato of a wingnut gets passed to next, we’re left listening to the dulcet tones of Davis’ third husband (fourth marriage). (The AP confirmed rumors that Davis has been married four times and bore two children out of wedlock; a Lexington newspaper confirmed that Davis, a Democrat, ran for the post her mother once occupied for years and that her son is her assistant.)
“Tell Bunning,” said Joe Davis, “he’s a butt.” This, after Judge David L. Bunning jailed his wife for contempt of court after refusing to issue the licenses. Early on in the debacle, Joe told a national reporter: “Just because five Supreme Court judges vote and say something is la≠w don’t make it law.”
Um, yes, sir, that’s actually precisely what that means.
Oh. He’s talking in code now about man’s law vs. God’s law. Whether the Davises’ beliefs are absolute, right or wrong does not matter.
This is a clear case of Kim Davis being mismatched for the job of county clerk, because her Apostolic Christian beliefs put her at direct loggerheads with what her elected post calls her to do. And, either sadly or hilariously, she and we cannot have it both ways.
If the evil ways of man and womankind fly in the face of her zealous Christian soul, then she needs to leave office and join her flock because the ways of the minority cannot be foisted upon and obeyed by the majority served by that minority.
Plus, she’s breaking a federal mandate.
Kim Davis is ripe to start her own congregation, whether officially or unofficially. She is poised and perfect to have “followers” for as long as that can last once her believers tire of the same message — hate thy neighbors and stop their progress and happiness so long as they’re not precisely like you — and realize the national news media has a one-week cumulative attention span and shelf life for whack-job stories emanating from the Coal Belt during an election cycle starring a loudmouthed billionaire who may or may not be a bigger bigot than Davis. So, Davis better hurry before she gets Trumped like the Republicans waiting to get a word in edgewise, because the lights will soon dim on the dim-witted.
However, Davis can take great inspiration from folks like Sarah Palin, the gold standard for extending her brand of stupidity by lobbing the dumbest utterances at just the right moment. In a grand gesture to align herself with Trump, Palin recently said that Mexicans who come here “should learn to speak American” after Trump said if Mexicans want to become Americans they should “act” American.
See, Davis? It can be done.
There definitely exists in America a sect of hill people who’d love to have the Davises lead them to their Promised Land where there are, thankfully, no faggots, dykes or he/she’s — only straight folks who can legally marry and divorce one another multiple times because, clearly, that’s cool with God.
GOP candidate Mike Huckabee has outed himself as a Davis supporter and said Judge Bunning violated Davis’ civil rights by jailing her. Huckabee will be visiting Davis in jail to solidify her role as one of his prime talking points so he can prove he is a Godly, arch-conservative capable of running this country for the good of white men just like him.
This all boils down to a social, cultural and legal distraction radicalizing yet giving bad names to conservative Christians everywhere, most of whom have not weighed in on police brutality in black neighborhoods and the dead black men sparking riots.
Unlike real movements, Davis’ will be a footnote, another black mark besmirching Kentucky since its slavery days.
Davis holds one commonality with slaveholders: They also claimed it was the Christian thing to do.
CONTACT KATHY Y. WILSON: [email protected]
