Kim Davis Marriage License Controversy

Overview

Kim Davis is the county clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who became a controversial figure after refusing to issue licenses for same-sex marriages in compliance with the United States Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling in June 2015. Following a period of deliberation in the federal court, Davis was held in contempt of court and jailed before her subordinates began issuing the licenses for same-sex couples on September 3rd.

Background

On August 12th, 2015, Judge David L. Bunning of United States District Court for Eastern Kentucky ruled that Kim Davis must be ordered to issue licenses to four couples who had sued her for her refusal to issue licenses to same-sex couples.^[1] Her lawyers appealed and she did not show up for work the next day, and her deputies continued to say that licenses would not be issued. Davis claimed that it went against her religious freedom as an Apostolic Christian to be forced to offer licenses that she didn't agree with.^[2]

On Monday, August 31st, the United States Supreme Court denied her requests to prevent the order from taking effect. On September 3rd, Davis was charged with contempt of court and jailed for continuing to refuse to issue marriage licenses.^[3] After several attempts at a compromise, which Davis refused, she remained jailed on September 4th as five other employees of the Rowan County Clerk's office began issuing licenses to same-sex couples that day; however, Davis' attorney claimed that licenses were void.^[4] On September 8th, after five days of detainment, Davis was released from the Carter County Detention Center by the judge's new order under the stipulation that she does not interfere with her deputies issuing marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.

Notable Developments

Kim Davis's Marriage History

On September 1st, several news sources reported that Kim Davis, who claimed her religious beliefs prevented her from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, had been married four separate times, and mothered children out of wedlock.^[5]

Clerks at the local courthouse claimed that Davis's wedding history was a "popular file," and that many had asked to see it. Inside, it recorded that Davis was first divoced in 1994, and that she gave birth to twins after the divorce. However, those twins were fathered by the man who would be her third husband, and adopted by her second husband. In 2006 and 2008 she divorced again, and after marrying her most recent husband, claimed that she became a born-again Christian and therefore had lived a Christian life since her most recent marriage.

GoFundMe Changes

Many spectators of Kim Davis's case predicted that she was attempting to cash in via crowdfunding, in the way that other opponents of same-sex marriage, like Memories Pizza in Indiana, had been able to after refusing to service gay couples. In an MSNBC interview on September 1st, sex columnist and political activist Dan Savage said,

“I think Kim Davis is waiting to cash in. I predicted from the beginning that she would defy all the court orders, defy the Supreme Court. She would be ultimately be held in contempt of court, lose her job, perhaps go to prison for a short amount of time and then she will have written for her ghost-written books, she will go on the right-wing lecture circuit and she'll never have to do an honest day's work ever again in her life.”^[6]

However, on September 3rd, Uproxx reported that Kim Davis would not be able to reap any benefit from a GoFundMe page as Memories Pizza had done, because GoFundMe had altered the policies by which it would allow people to set up accounts. They reported that GoFundMe would now not allow "Campaigns in defense of formal charges or claims of heinous crimes, violent, hateful, sexual or discriminatory acts."^[7] However, a parody fundraiser was created on the competing site Crowdrise, called "The Kim Davis Make-Over Fund"^[12]

Online Reaction

Between August 31st and September 4th, Kim Davis and #KimDavis were tweeted over 300,000 times cumulatively.^[8][9] In addition, many users tweeting about the controversy also employed the hashtags #tcot (Top Conservatives of Twitter) and #DoYourJob, the slogan for the New England Patriots, which was being repurposed by people telling Davis to resume issuing licenses.^[10]

The parody Twitter account Next To Kim Davis was created on September 1st, claiming to be a woman who was featured in many photographs of Davis, sitting next to her. The account bio read "I sit next to Kim Davis. This was supposed to just be a chill job. Goddamn it, Kim." and by September 4th, it already had about 64,000 followers.^[11]

Many users created image macros featuring photographs of Davis taken at her office, in the Rowan County Courthouse. Many of these images made jokes about Davis' four marriages, and many criticized her fashion sense or physical appearance, and sites like Queerty and PinkNews collected the images.

Still Does Her Job

On September 9th, 2015, Shaun Osburn and his partner Michael^[17] tweeted an image macro based on the X-Files protagonist Dana Scully with the caption praising the character's work ethics in the style of Good Guy Greg, along with a note to the actress Gillian Anderson asking for her reaction. In less than 24 hours, the post received more than 240 retweets and 480 favorites, as well as a shoutout response from the actress' official Twitter account.

Upon its re-submission to /r/funny^[16], the post reached the front page and garnered more than 5,100 points overall (94% upvotes). Throughout the day, several derivative image macro jokes highlighting other fictional characters' dedication to professionalism followed suit on Imgur^[16] (shown below). On September 11th, Cheezburger^[18] published a compilation of notable examples from the series.

Search Interest

Kim Davis is a common name and many of the results here dating before August 2015 refer to others who possess it.

External References