RWNJ Kentucky County Clerk Ordered Jailed For Contempt Of Court Over Refusal To Issue Gay Marriage Licenses

Katherine Krueger and Tierney Sneed at TPM:

Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue gay marriage licenses, has been found in contempt of court and taken into federal custody.

According to AP, U.S. District Judge David Bunning said Thursday that Davis would be held in jail until she complied with the previous court orders to begin granting the marriage licenses.

...

And thus it must be in a society where the rule of law prevails over the rule of wo/man. If people start choosing which judges' orders they obey and which they do not, the required balance between freedom and order in society will quickly collapse in favor of wanton freedom, and the laws of the land will become utterly unenforceable.

Someone could do Kim Davis a favor by explaining the workings of civil disobedience to her: the person engaging in civil disobedience expects to go to jail for what s/he does; it cannot be otherwise, because s/he is violating the law. If Ms. Davis wants to decide in her own mind what the law means and act accordingly, but not be jailed for her lawbreaking, then she is asserting that she is some kind of queen, or at least a princess: not in America, baby, not in America.

Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz had some interesting things to say in Krueger and Sneed's article (which you really should read before proceeding)...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also rushed to Davis' defense: "I think it’s absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberties," he said on CNN.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) issued a statement calling for "every lover of liberty to stand for Kim Davis." “Kim Davis should not be in jail. We are a country founded on Judeo-Christian values, founded by those fleeing religious oppression and seeking a land where we could worship God and live according to our faith, without being imprisoned for doing so," he said.

(Sigh! the RWNJs always require explanation of the simplest matters of rights and responsibilities.)

Sen. Paul, it's not for exercising her religious liberties that Davis is being jailed: those are liberties of belief and expression, not of action in contravention to the law, especially as in this case where the law couldn't possibly be clearer after the Supreme Court's refusal to support Ms. Davis's position.

And Sen. Cruz, I am at least as American as you are, and the nation I fight for is NOT "founded on Judeo-Christian values" because though I am religious, I am not a Christian, whether you like that fact or not. And I'm pretty sure you don't, you un-American bastard.

Just for good measure, Mike Huckabee chimed in:

... former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said, "Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubts about the criminalization of Christianity in this country."

No, ex-Gov. Huckabee, it "removes all doubts about the criminalization of" criminal behavior, and most of us don't have any problem with that. Sit down and STFU!

‘Charlie Hebdo’

Terrorists in Paris have attacked Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper which had the [sarcasm] unmitigated gall [/sarcasm] to satirize radical Islam. Two Three masked gunmen, operating with what was called trained military precision and AK‑47 assault rifles, killed 12 people in the newspaper's office, four of them cartoonists who were famous for their lampoons of Islamic subjects, one, the editor of the newspaper. ABC has reported, about an hour or two ago as I write this post, one suspect has surrendered; the other two are at large. Survivors of the attack reported that the terrorists named aloud each person as they killed him or her.

Much to my dismay, the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" have been used in the US to describe any and all kinds of people who attack anyone for any reason, sometimes even to describe political enemies. This is not such a misuse: this is truly terrorism. The gunmen shouted "Allahu akbar" and the equivalent of "We have avenged the prophet Muhammad." They are probably armed and doubtlessly dangerous, wherever they are tonight. The US is not exempt from threats, by these individuals or others associated with them.

One danger is the readiness of some Americans to malign all Muslims for the acts of radical Islamic organizations. Right after 9/11, I knew some Muslims in our apartment complex who quickly emigrated to another country where one had relatives, anticipating the kind of hateful, irrational response the US government mounted under [sarcasm] President Dick Cheney and Vice President George W. Bush [/sarcasm]. I also knew a former friend of Stella's who was prepared to accuse anyone he thought insufficiently Christian (me, for example; I'm a Unitarian Universalist and indeed I am not a Christian) of being a radical Islamist, deserving of imprisonment and/or assault by any red-blooded American.

How can we persuade fear-riddled people, American or French or any other nationality, to refrain from indulging their deepest prejudices against people different from themselves, especially religious people? Intransigent religious extremists are, indeed, among the most dangerous people in the world, and some of them do indeed engage in organized terrorism — but every major religion in the world has such people among their devout followers, and it is simply unjust to assault the nonviolent, more conventional adherents of those faiths. If followed by citizens of every nation and adherents of every religion, that way lies chaos.

Then there's the fundamental matter of free speech. Since the US Supreme Court came to have six (6!) Catholic members, I have given those Catholic Justices a lot of grief in print. Most of my Catholic friends understand my concern with such a ⅔ religious majority on the Court, even if they disagree with me... what about the tiny minority of American Catholics who would be ready and willing to do violence to me for expressing my concerns publicly?

I cannot offer to retract anything I've said, any more than the staff of Charlie Hebdo could retract the sometimes scathing satire that is (was?) their stock-in-trade.

This cannot end well.

My heart is with the French people, and especially the loved ones of the victims of the terrorist attack, on this horrifying day.

ADDENDUM: The gunmen have been identified as French nationals. Heaven help the great nation of France...

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(And all this is happening on the birthday of my late, much lamented father, Bill Bates. [sigh /])

You Think Religious Fundamentalists Are Harmless, As Long As They Call Themselves Christian? Fat Chance!

librarisingnsf at Kos, for LGBT Kos Community:

Anti-Gay NC Church Members Indicted For Felony Kidnapping And Assault Of Gay Man

...

From LGBTQ Nation:

... but religious bigotry
is no laughing matter

Five members of an anti-LGBT church in Spindale, N.C., were indicted on several felony charges this week, following a complaint lodged by a young gay man who says church members kidnapped him and assaulted him because of his sexual orientation.

A grand jury indicted Justin Brock Covington, Brooke McFadden Covington, Robert Louis Walker Jr. and Adam Christopher Bartley on second degree kidnapping and simple assault charges. A fifth member, Sarah Covington Anderson, was indicted on second degree kidnapping as well as simple assault and assault by strangulation.

The grand jury met on Monday, with indictment announcements released on Tuesday.

All are members of The Word of Faith Fellowship, a church which has continually come under fire for its alleged cult-like behaviors and severe treatment of members, particularly young people.

In this most recent case, 21-year-old student Matthew Fenner, a member of the church since age 16, alleges that several members targeted him because of his sexual orientation.

...

May the good Dog spare me from bigots. If this church didn't hate gays, they'd hate Blacks. If they didn't hate Blacks, they'd hate Unitarians. (No, I'm not making that up; one such person raged and raved at me for being a UU... the R&R took place over a lunch table at a music workshop. FWIW, my UU church in my young adult years had an openly gay minister, and all of us, straight, gay and otherwise, admired him greatly.)

Apparently the fundies have to hate somebody to keep the fire in their bellies going. I am not Christian, but I have serious doubts that Jesus would recognize these people as members of his flock.

Past(or) All Reason — Tempe, AZ Preacher Says AIDS‑Free Is Easy, Just Kill All Gays

Steven Payne at Kos:

Dear Lord, please kill Obama,
and kill all the Jews,
and kill all the faggots!

Faithful Word Baptist Church Pastor Steven Anderson of Tempe, Arizona is no stranger to spewing awful things in the name of the Lord. In 2009, Anderson made a media splash when he delivered a sermon during which he prayed for President Obama's death. Just this past March, he went on a tirade over women who so much as dared utter an amen in church, telling his lady-congregants that their place was subserviently in the home. He has also had some choice words for Jewish people, declaring that "Christ-rejecting jews are children of the devil".

...

Moved by the Christmas spirit, Anderson laid out his final solution for all those homos spreading the AIDS — execute them all, preferably before the day Christians celebrate the birth of that blessed little baby, Hallelujah!

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Wow... assassination of the President, silencing all women, gay executions and murderous anti-Semitism too! What more could a RWNJ ask for! And G*d save you from this man if you're a gay Jew, and yes, I've known a few.