Civil Commotion

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis took the stand yesterday to explain why she cannot issue marriage licenses.

Early on in Thursday’s hearing Davis, an Apostolic Christian, took the stand to argue why she shouldn’t be jailed. It was, her attorneys argued, a “factually impossible” order to follow.

Davis’s attorney Roger Gannam asked the clerk about the day she found God. Davis broke down in tears and faintly replied: “I did a lot of wicked things in my time.” When Gannam asked for her definition of marriage, she responded: “Marriage is a union between one man and one woman.”

Asked if she was capable of believing otherwise, Davis said: “No.”

This a severely disturbed, self-loathing person, and whatever self-esteem she possesses arises out of belonging to her church-club, out of having an Invisible Friend who loves her in spite of her wickedness. I suspect she feels unable to risk letting go of the self-respect lifeline that she gets from her church. For her, the fight is not political but existential — and, nothing personal gay folk, but it’s just too bad for you.

Not any of which excuses her ill behavior. I do think, though, that she is a more troubled and 3-dimensional person than the easy pejoratives suggest. And if we could know, I think we would find that she is typical of many, perhaps most, people who are not born into family piety but find it when they get older.

Christianity finds sickness necessary, just as the Greek spirit had need of a superabundance of health — the actual ulterior purpose of the whole system of salvation of the church is to make people ill.

Nietzsche, The Antichrist, §51

Definitely, he was on to something.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
Concluding remarks concerning the criticism of morality

§404   Morality may be regarded as the illusion of a species, fostered with the view of urging the individual to sacrifice himself to the future and seemingly granting him such a very great value, that with that self-consciousness he may tyrannise over and constrain other sides of his nature and find it difficult to be pleased with himself.

We ought to be most profoundly thankful for what morality has done hitherto: but now it is no more than a burden which may prove fatal. Morality itself, in the form of honesty, urges us to deny morality.

Kim Davis confirms yesterday’s speculation that her toxic religiosity is a consequence of her checkered marital/parental history.

So how does she handle the reporters and talking heads who call her a hypocrite?

“All I can say to them is if they have a sordid past like what I had, they too can receive the cleansing and renewing, and they can start a fresh life and they can be different,” she said. “They don’t have to remain in their sin, there’s hope for tomorrow.”

So, as I said then, her sense of self-worth comes from the old children’s song: Jesus loves me, this I know …

Her bizarre religiosity, that is, is merely the next step in the progression of the emotional/psychological problems that screwed-up her marriages.

I share the view that she remains responsible for her refusal to obey the law, and if fines or even jail are what it takes to compel her to fulfill her plain responsibilities, then … OK. But let’s not misapprehend what is going on here: She is a severely troubled person, and she is being grievously misused by amoral predators whose marketing shtick is crafted to appeal to damaged people like her. Her troubles have made her the acolyte of a cult.

A Tennessee man has killed his wife, believing she hid his tithe money from him.

An elderly Tennessee man fatally shot his wife in the head after accusing her of stealing money he said he had set aside to tithe to his church, authorities said.

Norman McKinney, 76, of Erwin, TN, was charged with first-degree murder on Monday.

Fortunately, as every devout Christian knows, pleasing Our Invisible Friend is more important than wedding vows, so his few years in a 6×8 cell will doubtless be followed by eternity in a mansion.