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On September 04 2015 06:39 Gorsameth wrote: It was actually a serious question. She is jailed. Still refuses to co-operate. What next? Can the Judge remove her from office?
There is a process to remove her, which will either start now if there is the political will to do so. Or the Plaintiffs will request the judge order that process to start if it doesn't happen naturally.
Hypothetical question - just out of curiosity. What would happend if she would get pardoned right now? Can the judge put her back in jail since she is still in contempt or he cant cause You cant be punished twice for the same crime?
Can people being held conetempt by the court even be pardoned?
There are two kinds of contempt: criminal and civil. She's being held for the civil kind of contempt, which iirc isn't subject to being pardoned. She can also get out of jail at any time by complying with the court order (issue the licenses), or by resigning (so she wasn't a relevant authority for issuing licenses).
and re: cowboy part of the point of civil disobedience is to accept the punishment for your actions. The injustice of it helps to demonstrate the rightness of your cause.
On September 04 2015 15:42 Silvanel wrote:Hypothetical question - just out of curiosity. What would happend if she would get pardoned right now? Can the judge put her back in jail since she is still in contempt or he cant cause You cant be punished twice for the same crime?
Can people being held conetempt by the court even be pardoned?
Civil contempt isn't pardonable (under federal law).
Criminal contempt is pardonable, but pardons don't excuse continuing violations. (Of course, the President could avoid this problem by issuing a recurring pardon.) There's no double jeopardy problem since continuing violation of the order is a separate offense. And in any case, it's unclear whether the prohibition under double jeopardy would apply.
I have very little sympathy for people who use religion as an excuse for acting like a bigot or not doing their job. It frustrates me when people don't understand that freedom of religion is fine, up until when the beliefs and actions start to explicitly infringe upon others' rights.
And in this case she is also preventing everyone in her office from exercising their religious freedom by issuing licenses if they want. Other clerks just resigned over it. But she insists on claiming she is being her religious freedom is being repressed because she can us it to repressed others.
Nothing says deeply religious like being divorced three times. Or conceiving a child outside of marriage. Which is quite ironic given she looks like the physical manifestation of abstinence.
With defiant county clerk in jail, gay Kentucky couple receives marriage license
MOREHEAD, Ky. — When the Rowan County Courthouse opened for business Friday, deputy clerk Brian Mason was waiting at the front counter, behind a sign that read: “Marriage License Deputy.”
James Yates and William Smith Jr. entered the media-filled courthouse shortly after 8 and promptly began the process of applying for a marriage license. Again.
They had been rejected five times previously, as Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to any couples since the Supreme Court declared in June that gay couples had a constitutional right to wed.
On Thursday, Davis was sent to jail by U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning, who also ordered five of the six deputy clerks in the county to begin issuing marriage licenses to all couples. The deputies agreed, under oath.
By 8:15 Friday morning, Yates and Smith had finally obtained the elusive $35 license.
Mason, the deputy clerk, congratulated the couple and shook their hands.
Yates and Smith hugged and cried.
“They got it!” a man shouted.
As the couple exited the courthouse, same-sex marriage supporters erupted in cheers, chanting: “Love won! Love won!”
pic.twitter.com/SQb2qkh0B3
— Mike Wynn (@MikeWynn_CJ) September 4, 2015
Yates and Smith said they now had to set a wedding date. Then, they walked hand-in-hand to their car, followed by cameras and boom mics.
As the license was issued, Davis was being held at the Carter County Detention Center, about 35 miles away. Bunning ordered the 49-year-old clerk to be taken into custody for refusing in the face of multiple court orders to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
This photo made available by the Carter County Detention Center shows Kim Davis after she was ordered to jail. (Carter County Detention Center via AP) [Kim Davis ordered to jail for refusing to issue gay marriage licenses]
Davis, an Apostolic Christian, has said repeatedly that she could not issue such marriage licenses because of her religious beliefs. Pressure on Davis intensified after the Supreme Court on Monday decided not to grant her a reprieve.
“To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience,” Davis said in a statement Tuesday. “It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision.”
She consigned herself to jail Thursday, sparking a fresh round of legal wrangling and political calculation in the face of the most audacious display of defiance on the issue of same-sex marriage since the Supreme Court declared in June that gay couples had a constitutional right to wed.
[‘He has guts': David Bunning, the same-sex marriage decision’s unlikely enforcer]
“Personal opinions, including my own, are not relevant to today,” Bunning, a federal district judge, told Davis and the courtroom Thursday. “The idea of natural law superseding this court’s authority would be a dangerous precedent indeed.”
Davis’s husband, Joe, told reporters in Morehead on Friday that his wife was “in good spirits” and ready to remain in jail for as long as necessary. He added that Kim Davis would not resign from her position.
Pastor Marty Smith says he's praying for the removal of five Supreme Court justices, after the #KimDavis ruling. pic.twitter.com/DvIPsF7tVV
— Jim Higdon (@jimhigdon) September 4, 2015
“Today, the needless wait for loving and committed couples in Rowan County, Kentucky, has finally ended,” Human Rights Campaign legal director Sarah Warbelow said in a statement. “Denied a constitutionally protected right to marriage by a public official who thought her religious opinion placed her above the law, these couples waited far too long for marriage equality in the place they call home. Justice, equality, and the law have finally prevailed.”
On September 04 2015 22:03 always_winter wrote: Nothing says deeply religious like being divorced three times. Or conceiving a child outside of marriage. Which is quite ironic given she looks like the physical manifestation of abstinence.
My grandfather, a life long member of our church, always said: "When it comes to conviction, there is nothing like the converted." It was not a complement or praise.
On September 04 2015 03:19 Plansix wrote: I find the entire analogy to be sort of silly since the main goal of violating the law was to start the discussion about gay marriage and work through the process in the court and political system. His intent was clear and the people who lived in the city supported it.
This case is a clear example of someone pushing against a solved ruled upon issue, like a Governor standing in-front of a public school with a fire ax.
I guess my analogy probably was flawed in some key ways, so let me try to dispense with analogies:
Kim Davis is unquestionably breaking the law in the name of activism. She is engaging in civil disobedience. I suppose my question would be this:
Are we okay with jailing everyone who engages in civil disobedience, or are we not? How do we decide which people it's okay to arrest and which people it isn't? I personally think it would be unjust to arrest a black woman in the 1950s for sitting at the front of a bus, even if it was in violation of the law. Obviously the law was unjust, so breaking it was not an act worthy of imprisonment.
But then I have to ask myself if it is only wrong to jail people for civil disobedience when I disagree with the law in question. It's unjust to jail the black man because segregation laws are wrong, but it's just to jail the county-clerk because legalizing homosexual marriage is right? I suppose that argument makes sense, and it's a valid position to take.
I guess I just hope that the government always agrees with me about what's the right and wrong kind of civil disobedience.
she isn't jailed because homosexual marriage is right. She's jailed because she's denying people that right.
Just changing the PoV from the one being targeted (the black woman in your example), wether that right existed at that time already or not, to the one doing the infringing on rights (the woman in the news) and thus concluding "they're treated completly differently!" doesn't do you any good...
Her rights aren't infringed upon at all, thus her "civil disobedience" isn't okay. She has the right to believe whatever she wants to and to practice most of that as long as it's not infringing on other peoples rights. If you believe her rights to religious freedom are infringed upon you'd also agree that a religious Hindu who refuses to eat meat from a cow, who made it into some city council is allowed to ban all restaurants/supermarkets who sell beef, just because he happens to think that's a sin. And surely you can't expect him to sign something that's part of that. You'd also agree that a muslim who happens to think sharia law is the way to go should be allowed to enforce that in his city if he makes it far enough to the top because otherwise would infringe on his religious beliefs.
I doubt you'd agree with any of that?
A better example would have been abortion imo. If you are of the opinion that a fetus should have all the rights from the moment of conception you do believe that someone's rights are infringed. Of course that's not as black and white as the examples above because we really do have two people and their rights colliding in that situation but you can at least argue that.
On September 05 2015 02:33 Slaughter wrote: Why don't they just do what other states have done in cases with clerks like Davis where they designate a sub for it.
Because she flat out refused to let them. She didn't' want to find a solution. She wanted to prevent gay couples from getting married through the power of her office. She choose this situation when numerous options were provided for her to avoid it.
On September 05 2015 02:34 Toadesstern wrote: Her rights aren't infringed upon at all, thus her "civil disobedience" isn't okay.
So you're saying that it's okay to jail her because she's not engaging in civil disobedience for the right reasons? I suppose I could understand that, though I think that's definitely a slippery-slope. Especially when the law was basically created by the Supreme Court with pretty questionable justification less than a year ago. I also wonder why it is so easy to enforce the law against a small-time county-clerk from the middle of nowhere, but when a high-profile politician refuses to enforce immigration law, or refuses to follow the law concerning the storing/distribution of classified information, or refuses to enforce certain Healthcare mandates, or refuses to enforce federal drug laws, or refuses to comply with gun allowances... then there is nothing we can do.
And I understand there are legal loopholes that technically allow some of these politicians to ignore the law and get away with it, but at that point it just seems like simple political point-scoring. Which is where it has seemed to come down in recent years with the gay-marriage debate. It's always some small-time clerk or some small-time diner or some small-time bakery. How often does the relatively powerless little-guy have to be nationally and federally punished before it becomes simple bullying? is it okay to bully someone because we don't like what they believe?
On September 05 2015 02:34 Toadesstern wrote: Her rights aren't infringed upon at all, thus her "civil disobedience" isn't okay.
So you're saying that it's okay to jail her because she's not engaging in civil disobedience for the right reasons? I suppose I could understand that, though I think that's definitely a slippery-slope. Especially when the law was basically created by the Supreme Court with pretty questionable justification less than a year ago. I also wonder why it is so easy to enforce the law against a small-time county-clerk from the middle of nowhere, but when a high-profile politician refuses to enforce immigration law, or refuses to follow the law concerning the storing/distribution of classified information, or refuses to enforce certain Healthcare mandates, or refuses to enforce federal drug laws, or refuses to comply with gun allowances... then there is nothing we can do.
And I understand there are legal loopholes that technically allow some of these politicians to ignore the law and get away with it, but at that point it just seems like simple political point-scoring. Which is where it has seemed to come down in recent years with the gay-marriage debate. It's always some small-time clerk or some small-time diner or some small-time bakery. How often does the relatively powerless little-guy have to be nationally and federally punished before it becomes simple bullying? is it okay to bully someone because we don't like what they believe?
If they think black people are less them human and they won’t serve them, yes. If they think gay marriage is a sin and they won’t provide them with services they provide everyone else, yep. That is discrimination, which is form of bullying, since you like to use the term. Telling someone you won't serve them because you disapprove of their gender, race or that they are gay is just being a bigot. And if those people are ordered by the court to stop doing that and refuse, they can be held in contempt.
People don’t live in a vacuum. They have to exists with other people that don’t believe what they believe. And when you open store to the public or work a government job, there are rules. And one of the rules is that you can’t pick who you serve based on race, gender or sexual orientation.
Also, those people were not powerless. They had just enough power to deny service to someone based on their race, gender or sexual orientation. And if one of them can do it, everyone can. Which includes people renting apartment or serving food.
It's always ok to jail someone for civil disobedience. That's the point of civil disobedience.
The idea is that if your cause is just, people will see you suffering for it and line up behind you. If it's unjust, they'll say "what a douchebag" and move on with their lives.
On September 05 2015 04:31 Yoav wrote: It's always ok to jail someone for civil disobedience. That's the point of civil disobedience.
The idea is that if your cause is just, people will see you suffering for it and line up behind you. If it's unjust, they'll say "what a douchebag" and move on with their lives.
Agreed. Some people seem to think that civil disobedience is some sort of legal loophole that people can use as a defense so that they aren't prosecuted. It's still breaking the law. It just (sometimes) happens to have a moral point to it, where it's more likely for the general population to evaluate the circumstances more closely to see if there's an issue worth fighting for.
There is a context section at the bottom, which is longer than I would like, but I think it is important to articulate what I saw and whom I spoke with (and what I didn't see and whom I didn't meet) so that you understand my data set and its clear limitations. To say I was profoundly disturbed by what I saw - and didn't see - would be an understatement. The incompetence is mind numbing. Not incidentally, it rained twice while I was there. If we do not quickly change the organization, management, accountability and delivery paradigm on the ground, we could quite conceivably confront tens of thousands of children's deaths by diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid and other water-related diseases in the near future. Below are my major takeaways and a few nascent/early thoughts on what we (however we define we) could to do drive significant and incremental improvements on the ground in the near and longer term. As is often said, if I had more time - and less emotion - I would have written a shorter letter. I hope this mini-behemoth is not rife with grammatical errors or inadvertent gaps; I am sorry if either true. Please do not forward this in whole or in part attributed to me without asking me first - happy to be an invisible soldier. Mainly hope this is even marginally helpful. Thanks, Chelsea
She should have just resigned. If your convictions prevent you from doing a job, you leave the job.
As much as I disagree with the way she's gone about things, all the "gets divorced 3 times -> upholds sanctity of marriage" memes are ingenuine as well. Her current position developed well after the last divorce, afaik.
On September 05 2015 08:48 Belisarius wrote: She should have just resigned. If your convictions prevent you from doing a job, you leave the job.
As much as I disagree with the way she's gone about things, all the "gets divorced 3 times -> upholds sanctity of marriage" memes are ingenuine as well. Her current position developed well after the last divorce, afaik.
But then what is the point of being faithful? She is going to hell after all for her previous sins.
Oh right. Forgiveness and Absolution. Gee I guess that could also work for handing out a piece of paper with no religious value yet somehow go's against your non-existent belief.
EPT
It was actually a serious question.
