Many within the LGBTQ social media sphere are trying to draw attention to the fact that Kim Davis, the Rowan Kentucky clerk who refuses to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds, has been married four times and her story prior to becoming a Christian is pretty much a mess. Dan Savage included, their point is that she’s a hypocrite, since the Bible is quite clear condemning divorce and remarriage, which is tantamount to adultery in a purely Biblical interpretation. Savage rants about how her theology is a sorry state of Christianity, and he is entirely right I think.

Except I don’t think the number of times she has been married really matters. Married once or married a hundred times, her failure to issue marriage licenses, means she is failing to do her job which is secular in nature. Getting caught up in whose the biggest hypocrite or the biggest sinner, or however the rhetoric gets framed is just another way to be distracted from the real issue- our Constitution guarantees a separation of Church and State, and Davis’s refusal to separate her personal religious beliefs from carrying out her duties as an elected official is unacceptable from a Constitutional perspective.

Kim Davis wasn’t elected to be judge over others. She can personally believe same-sex couples are sinning and headed for Hell, but she has no right to use her personal opinions to take away other peoples’ rights. She is an elected public servant, not public moral judge. And this is true regardless of how many times she has been married or who fathered her children.

Kim Davis is, in many ways, similar to Josh Duggar, who I wrote about previously:

The ones who are so busy trying to change LGBTQ persons or shame LGBTQ persons or demonize us, are acting out of some deeper pain or guilt. They have to make others out to be worse persons than themselves to make themselves feel better. They have to focus on others so as to be distracted from looking at their own lives.