If you stand close enough to Kim Davis, who refused marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds, you will detect a whiff of the roses.
As in victory.
When the Kentucky judge this morning released The Best Known County Clerk from a State Beginning with “K” curiously, his reasoning walked out of the courtroom with a crutch beneath each arm.
“Why” is the most intriguing question in life.
Judge Davey Bunning was blowing smoke, though, just as he did when he jailed Ms. Davis for refusing to hand marriage licenses to gay men and gay women. Did he bow to heat from home? Political pressure? His next election?
He sent Ms. Davis to jail without explanation and released her with the same amorphous vacancy.
The latter was, of course, the correct move.
The judge today did warn Ms. Davis, jailed since last Thursday, that she may not interfere with five of her six deputies who have agreed to issue marriage licenses to men who wish to marry each other and women who do.
Concession No. 1.
Judge Bunning ruled that Ms. Davis cannot interfere in any way with the issuance of gay marriage licenses.
Her deputies handed licenses to three gay couples last week.
Did she win or did she lose?
The judge said those three licenses fulfilled his order to comply with the law.
That, he said, provided him with justification for dropping the contempt citation.
Ponder concession No. 2:
Not incidentally, Judge Bunning said that licenses for the gay marriages had been altered (!) so that Rowan County, rather than the name “Kim Davis,” is on the document.
That smells, unmistakably, like a Kim Davis victory.
