Kim Davis. I haven’t thought about her for nearly a decade. Unfortunately, she apparently never stopped thinking about me.
Well, not me, specifically. I never met the woman. More like anyone who was able to marry after the landmark Obergefell decision that led to marriage equality becoming law across the country.
When Davis, at the time a Kentucky county clerk, denied a marriage license to David Ermold and David Moore in 2015, they sued her. And they won. She went to jail for six days and was given a hefty fine.
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court is packed with rightwing extremists, Davis has turned to the court to enact revenge.
“Davis argues First Amendment protection for free exercise of religion immunizes her from personal liability for the denial of marriage licenses,” reports ABC News. “More fundamentally, she claims the high court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges — extending marriage rights for same-sex couples under the 14th Amendment’s due process protections — was ‘egregiously wrong.’”
Egregiously wrong. Everyone who was allowed to marry because of the Obergefell decision: egregiously wrong. All of the love shared between those couples: egregiously wrong. All of the families started by those couples: egregiously wrong.
Granted, none of those things would make my list of “Things That Are Egregiously Wrong.” In fact, none of those things would make the list of most of the people in this country. And yet, it doesn’t matter what we think. It only matters what a bitter woman in Kentucky, her team of high-powered conservative lawyers, and six extremist Supreme Court judges think.
According to ABC News, “Davis is seen as one of the only Americans currently with legal standing to bring a challenge to the precedent.” Because Davis was sued and lost her case back in 2015.
If we had a time machine, we could go back and talk the Davids out of suing her. We could have just asked them to take one for the team. Go to a different clerk. Let Davis be the End All Be All of marriage licenses in Rowan County, Kentucky.
But, of course, that wouldn’t change anything. It would have just been another clerk somewhere else claiming that doing her job for gays was religious discrimination, letting Davis get away with it would make her a model for homophobes to follow nationwide.
And so here we are.
Now, if you think I’m being alarmist — after all, the Supreme Court hasn’t even heard the case yet — I assure you I am not. If you think for one moment that the same court that overturned Roe v Wade, scrapping the right to abortion that was established in 1973, would hesitate to overturn a 10-year-old ruling that made marriage equality legal, then you don’t know much about history, as the old song goes.
When Roe was overturned, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion that the court “should reconsider” (in other words, overturn) “substantive due process precedents, including contraception, same-sex marriage, and even same-sex relationships,” reports The New Republic.
This would be a dream come true for the Christo-fascists currently in charge of the whole federal government and the courts.
I still remember when pundits were saying that the Supreme Court would never overturn Roe because it would be so unpopular.
And then after the decision, indeed, proved to be deeply unpopular, pundits said that it would doom Republicans and usher in a blue wave of Democrats.
But that has not happened. With the 2026 midterms looming, Democrats are more reviled than ever. By Republicans, yes, but also by the Democratic base which cannot believe the Democrats’ utter failure to meet this moment in history even though nothing that is happening is a surprise.
Republicans promised a full-fascist takeover should they win power. They laid it all out in Project 2025. And Democrats act like this was some kind of surprise attack.
So, yeah, I’ve seen Obergefell’s demise coming for years, certainly since Roe died. I’ve been following right-wing extremism for decades and all signs have always pointed toward stripping women’s reproductive rights, dehumanizing and eradicating transgender people from public life, banning contraception and criminalizing marriage equality and queer sex.
But at least Kim Davis could finally be happy. That’s what really matters.
It is difficult to imagine how different the world would be if its guiding principle was love instead of hate. But it’s a lot easier to cause suffering than to ease it. Which is the conservative promise. And they haven’t broken that one yet.
If only instead of trying to abolish love between consenting adults, people tried to abolish things like famine, genocide, homelessness and disease.
What a wonderful world this would be.
