Tonight,
on All in with Chris Hayes, Chris asked Kim Davis' attorney if there is an end to her refusing to do her job based on her religious beliefs. He brought up two examples.
What about interracial marriage? Could a religious person like Kim Davis say that issuing licenses to marry interracial couples violated his/her religious beliefs? Could she deny an interracial couple a marriage license based on her beliefs?
“What’s the limiting principle on that conscious?” MSNBC host Chris Hayes asked Staver. “If she did not want to give marriage licenses to interracial couples, would that be OK?”
“You’ve got express constitutional amendments to that effect,” Staver replied. “The question here is whether there has been reasonable accommodation –”
“No no, I’m sorry, let’s just be clear here,” Hayes interjected, pointing out that it took the Loving v. Virginia ruling by the Supreme Court in 1967 to spell out the right to interracial marriages.
“The difference is, before and after the Supreme Court decision, marriage was always — and still remained — the union of a man and a woman,” Staver said. “There were express constitutional amendments against racial discrimination, and they injected race into the union between a man and a woman. It didn’t change the essence of marriage before or after Loving.”
There is no Constitutional amendment recognizing interracial marriages. The
Loving v. Virginia case was decided almost 100 years after slavery ended. There were state laws throughout the country, prohibiting interracial marriages. Black men were killed for even looking at a white woman.
Further, like same sex marriages, the basis is case law, a Supreme Court interpretation of the US Constitution. A case that expanded who could take advantage of what is marriage.
For some, interracial marriages did indeed change the essence of what was marriage. It was supposed to be intraracial and suddenly after Loving it wasn't. Thus, nothing Mr. Staver said is supported by fact.
What about divorce? There are clear prohibitions in the Bible against divorce and divorced people remarrying. Could someone like Kim Davis refuse to grant a divorce to someone? Or, refuse to give a license to a divorced person so that they could marry again? Mr. Staver, Kim Davis' attorney, refused to answer this question, despite Chris asking him repeatedly. Again, claiming biblical authority as a basis for not doing one's job when there are clear prohibitions in the Bible against remarriage shows the utter hypocrisy of Ms. Davis' religious stance.
And Chris pinned him down on the issue of redefining marriage. After all, the BIGGEST change to marriage is not including others, it's dissolution of the marriage itself, particularly no fault divorce . . . easy dissolution.
“Mr. Staver,” Hayes said after Staver repeated himself. “No-fault divorce is perhaps the most radical change to marriage that has happened in centuries. And there were many people, including the pope, who said so when it was introduced, OK?”
Ms. Davis' attorney really could not address the clear limits to her so-called religious stand. Not only has she been married multiple times, but she has also been divorced multiple times. Yet, despite the Bible, she remains married to her 4th husband, committing adultery on her 1st.
Presumably, her religious beliefs have not prevented her from giving licenses to people who are seeking to marry after having been divorced. I bet she never asked a single person who sought a license from her whether they had been previously married. I doubt she will ever ask. The problem? Visible identity. A same sex couple is readily identifiable and she can thus exercise her bigotry on them based on visible identity. One cannot see divorce on the faces of divorced people, allowing divorced people to be shielded from the bigotry expressed by Kim Davis' biblical beliefs.
Bottom line: Her stance is based on bigotry and nothing more. I bet she has given thousands of divorce people licenses, despite her religious beliefs. I supposed she has gotten several such licenses herself, being divorced multiple times. If she could give licenses to people who were divorced and refuse to give licenses to same sex couples to marry, she's a hypocrite.
If she does not want to have a same sex marriage, she does not have to get one. But it's her job to do the paperwork so that others can get their same sex marriage. The Court has spoken. Her religious beliefs are irrelevant to this job . . . and always have been. If she cannot do her job, she needs to quit.
The full video can be found on All in with Chris Hayes. It's not allowing me to embed from the MSNBC site.