Election 2016: Is Kim Davis This Year

At Wednesday’s GOP debates, Republican presidential candidates were divided over their position on a Kentucky Clerk of the Courts who was briefly jailed after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples, even after the United States Supreme Court ruled that all states must. This political non-issue could be a dangerous one for candidates that comes back to haunt them later.

In the early edition debate between Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum, the field was split with Jindal and Santorum arguing passionately for Davis’ cause. Graham more matter-of-factly suggested that the rule of law should prevail, while Pataki passionately argued that supporting a government official's decision to ignore the law of the land because they said it conflicted with a religious belief was nonsensical.

"There is a place where religion supersedes the rule of law," said Pataki, the former Governor of New York. "It’s called Iran. It shouldn’t be the United States.“

Santorum actually asserted that as President, he’d refuse to follow Supreme Court rulings if he decided they were wrong. Pataki countered that under such rule there would be no rule of law, to which Santorum, a former Senator from PA, argued that we don’t have rule of law now, but rather "judicial supremacy.“

What Santorum is missing is that our forefathers deliberately set up a system of checks and balances to prevent any of the three branches of our government to which power is divided, from running roughshod over the others. The Supreme Court decision simply puts the ball back into Congress’ court. It would take an Act of Congress to clearly change the law of the land that the SCOTUS interprets, an act that the Presidential branch would be able to veto, but that Congress can still override.

The problem on this issue is that Santorum–along with other candidates like Mike Huckabee who actually spawned the matter as a debate issue by calling it part of the "criminalization of Christianity“–know that they’d never be able to do any of that because Congress lacks support on the issue. Without the courts, the President, or enough of the Congress on board, the change he seeks won't be coming.

Like it or not, that’s the way our forefathers intended for the system to work and just because some particular minority group doesn’t like the way the majority of Americans (around 75 percent in this case) feel about an issue, trying to paint it as a matter of religious persecution doesn’t change that. And making Kim Davis the hero of any cause, particularly a Christian one, would seem like a dangerous proposition.

Davis has been married four times and divorced three. She seems to have gotten pregnant from her third husband while married to her first. Husband number two and four appear to be the same guy. The point is, she might not be the right poster girl for an argument that the "sanctity of marriage“ is solely the domain of heterosexuals, or for standing up for a deep conviction regarding Christian teachings.

Also, what exactly is heroic about voluntarily working for the government, deciding not to follow the laws you are sworn to uphold, and then still cashing your paycheck? Nobody forced Davis to work as a public official (for $80,000 a year, no less). If she didn’t like the idea that the laws she would have to uphold would come from the government and not the bible, she should have quit. That would have been a principled sacrifice worthy of our admiration. But let’s face it, there’s nothing that suggests that Davis could have pulled down 80 large in a rural Kentucky county where the average annual pay of workers was $31,798 in 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, keeping her job while refusing to do it doesn’t really seem like something heroic.

I find the idea of religious beliefs excusing us from following the law not only to be contradictory to a constitution with a deliberate separation of church and state, but downright frightening as well. What if a Scientologist holding public office decides that performing a certain duty might interfere with ridding themselves of the ancient alien spirits called Thetans that their scripture teaches are the sole source of all human ills? Better yet, what if a Muslim who was elected judge refused to abide by sentencing guidelines because they conflicted with Sharia law? Would the right be running to their rescue?

Muhammad Ali, a devout Muslim, gave up the Heavyweight Championship of the World, his entire financial fortune and faced a prison sentence because he refused to serve in the Vietnam War because it violated his religious beliefs. That was courageous, especially since the government offered Ali accommodations, assuring he could complete his service by boxing exhibitions for troops and never picking up a rifle.

Ali could have kept it all, but refused on principal. He then took the constitutional path and fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where he won a unanimous decision. If he hadn’t, Ali made it clear that he would go to prison for his beliefs. Kim Davis as a martyr? I think not.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who appeared to be on the uphold the rule of law side going into Wednesday’s debate, took a hard right turn and flip-flopped on the issue, suggesting we could accommodate Davis, by still paying her and maybe letting someone else do the parts of her job that she decided didn’t coincide with her beliefs. Jeb, who was Governor during the Terri Schiavo disaster that politically hurt Republicans, should know better.

Of course, once the debate moved to the immigration issue, we suddenly became a nation of laws once more. No one brought up the bible or whether opening our arms to illegal immigrants was the Christian thing to do. This sort of political contradiction and hypocrisy is exactly what most Americans are tired of and might best explain why the candidates who aren’t conforming to the I’ll say what I think they want me to methodology are apparently doing so well.