Kim Davis Is Full of Shit

Let's get something straight: Kim Davis is no Mother Teresa. The reason she will be spending the next week in jail has nothing to do with her religious beliefs. The simple fact is, as a government employee, she swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and she violated that oath. The judge who held her in contempt was a conservative who gave her ample opportunity to change her mind and then did what the law required him to do.

Democracy doesn't mean we get to do what we want. We are a nation of laws and when a person breaks one of them, they must be held accountable. To claim an exemption based on faith is patently absurd. Davis wasn't being asked to officiate the wedding ceremony or, dare I say it, bake a damn cake; she was being asked to issue a piece of paper that would allow someone else to officiate the ceremony and bake the cake, and she flatly refused. To paraphrase one of my Facebook friends, Kim Davis isn't being jailed for practicing her religion; she's being jailed for using the government to force others to practice hers.

Because that's what this comes down to in a nut shell. A tiny minority of aggrieved "Christians" who have decided that a few Bible verses, many of which are cultural in nature and none of which were uttered by Jesus himself, have become the sole basis for a new crusade to defend a way of life that for some twisted reason they see as being endangered; as if somehow allowing gays to marry undermines their heterosexual unions, which it most certainly does not.

Kim Davis is their new heroine, a modern-day Ruth, if you will. Funny, the Christian Right always comes up with the worst sort of characters to fulfill that role. Remember when they thought Sarah Palin was their Ruth? Now it's Davis's turn to wear the crown. A woman twice divorced is now the symbol of righteousness for all the God-fearing folk. I guess divorce isn't as high up the food chain of sins as homosexuality.

I'd call Davis and her warped entourage homophobic, but then I realize that would be doing a disservice to homophobes everywhere. You see homophobes, like all racists, are just ignorant fools who need to attack others to make up for their own insecurities. That's not the primary driving force behind this movement. No, Davis is no mere homophobe. Like so many of her ilk, she has convinced herself that her faith demands that she stand her ground. It isn't enough that she knows that gays are going to hell for the unpardonable sin of wanting to spend the rest of their lives together in wedded bliss; she's determined to make sure they know it. And the best way to do that is by denying them the opportunity to experience that bliss and maybe in the process covert them. For her, redemption as justification is the means to an ends. Talk about the ultimate in convoluted logic.

As a Christian myself, I find people like Davis deplorable for two reasons. The first is that the message she sends to others not yet in the faith is that Christianity is a hate-filled religion that appears to contradict many of its own precepts. And that is simply unacceptable. That a movement so insular and ignorant could define a faith I love so dearly is an affront to all I know and cherish. These people cannot begin to imagine the damage they are doing not just to their own souls but to others around them.

Secondly, if Davis and people like her would devote the same amount of energy they expend trying to stamp out supposedly immoral behavior on tackling real issues like poverty, hunger and disease, this world would be a far better place in which to live. Imagine a world where people had enough money to pay their rent, enough food to put on the table and had access to decent and affordable healthcare. I wonder where people like Davis were during the Ebola outbreak? Probably blaming the victims for being Godless heathens.

It's sad, but I seldom here from conservative Christians during such hard times. Typically they are far too busy reminding the rest of us how the world is going to hell in a hand basket, all the while forgetting their contribution to its hellish condition. It's easy to judge the afflicted; it's a lot harder to love and care for them.

As an ex-Catholic, I have grown to admire and respect Pope Francis, and I now know why so many within the Christian church don't care much for him. It's because he dares to speak the truth on so many relevant issues. He not only exposes the hearts of the cold and indifferent, he also challenges the religious authorities, something Jesus did this so frequently it cost him his life. And I also love his style; it's straight out of the Epistle of James. He is a doer, not a talker. He is the embodiment of Christ. Wouldn't it be great if more Christians acted like Christ instead of the Pharisees?

That's who Kim Davis is. She's a modern-day Pharisee. She talks about morality and what her religion forbids her from doing just like the Pharisees did during Jesus' time. She is nothing but a self-serving, self-righteous hypocrite who is full of judgment and most definitely full of shit.

And I personally don't care if she rots in jail for the rest of her life.