Faith and Kim Davis

She's all over the news and social media, so I suppose it's time I tossed in my two cents on the whole Kentucky clerk question.

She's wrong.

My father used to say "your rights end at my nose" .  Kim swore an oath to uphold the law of the land and just because her beliefs don't jibe with that law, does not mean that she can pick and choose which laws she is oath-bound to uphold.When the law passed, it was her responsibility to approach her employer and say that she could not do this on moral grounds.  It was then their responsibility to come up with a compromise that would allow the law to be upheld without forcing someone to go against their (wrong-headed) beliefs.  She's in jail because she continued to defy a court order. She encouraged and instructed her staff to defy the court order. If you or I defied a work directive, we would be fired or at the very least put on administrative leave and sent to another department. Kim and her lawyer are trying desperately to make her a Christian Martyr.  I smell a book deal and the talk-show circuit in her future.

I identify as Christian, specifically  "Plain-wrap, white bread Christian" but there you have it.  There are a lot of people talking about how we practice a "fairy tale religion"  and frankly I am a bit more than offended by that stance.  In some ways, the non-believers are as bad as some of the more radical evangelicals who preach damnation of you don't believe EXACTLY as they do.  I think I am a rather intelligent person.  I am also a person of faith.  I do not know how someone who had no belief in anything gets out of bed in the morning. I know my faith informs me, it guides me and it give me hope. As the song goes "You've gotta believe in something, if you don't you will be lost."  I do not believe anyone needs to believe as I do.  I do question some people's interpretation of the Bible.  Accuse me of "cherry picking" but here is my interpretation:   Harm no one, Help them if you can. Love one another. What is hateful to you, do not do to others. The rest  of the Bible is commentary. If you look at the Bible, I believe scholars divide it into three parts; history, poetry and philosophy.  I don't take all the philosophical rhetoric to heart, as a lot of it is in direct conflict with other passages.  When developing a philosophy of your own, you study what others have said and embrace or discard those ideas as they apply - or don't- to the core of what you believe.

That being said, I hope the Kim Davis situation , and potential situations like hers, can be avoided.  The fact that she is using her religion to deny specific rights to human beings whose lifestyle she disagrees with is just plain wrong.  What if a fast food worker, whose place of business began selling a product that their beliefs forbade them to consume, decided that in stead of looking for a way to continue to work but not serve that product and denied customers based solely on their beliefs?  Now getting a pulled pork sandwich is not a basic human right, but you get the idea.  When is one segment of the religious community allowed to dictate what others must believe?   Despite what you hear, the Founding Fathers of this country were VERY clear on separation of church and state for that very reason. There is no reference to God in the Constitution.  I was always taught America was founded on freedom OF and  freedom FROM religion.  I hope that is made clear to Ms Davis and others who feel that they have the right to use their beliefs to enforce their biases.