NULLIFICATION: KENTUCKY CLERK SAYS NO TO GAY MARRIAGE LICENSES; DEFIES DIRECT ORDER FROM GOVERNOR

NULLIFICATION: 

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

Kim Davis, Rowan County Clerk, 

Denies "Marriage" License 

to David Moore and David Ermold 

THEY CRY "CRUELTY"; THEN SUE

Denied marriage license in 

Morehead, KY - Rowan County

Published on Jul 7, 2015

Update: We went in for our second attempt for a marriage license in Rowan County on Aug. 13 and we were denied again, even though the County Clerk was under an injunction to issue all licenses. 2nd attempt video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEuZX...
If you are a news organization and would like to use our video, please contact me at davidvmoore1976@gmail.com. Second view video - with a better view of the clerk's desk -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLv37...

GOVERNOR STEVEN L. BESHEAR OF KENTUCKY

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM A LIBERAL:

GO FOR THE GOODIES IN THE HANDOUTS FROM GOVERNMENT

(IF YOU CAN REALLY FIND ANY)

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear’s Pastor: Drunkenness Not Sin, Homosexuality Up for ‘Interpretation’

SEE: http://christiannews.net/2015/09/02/kentucky-governor-steve-beshears-pastor-drunkenness-not-sin-homosexuality-up-for-interpretation/;

EXCERPTS:

"As Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a professing Christian, is refusing to intervene to protect the religious liberty of a county clerk who is facing possible punishment for defying a court order to issue marriage licenses to homosexuals, Beshear’s pastor says that he doesn’t teach about homosexuality in his congregation and leaves the issue of whether or not it is a sin up to “personal interpretation.”

As previously reported, Beshear, a Democrat and son and grandson of a minister, issued a statement yesterday outlining that he will not call a special session of the legislature to assist Rowan county clerk Kim Davis, who will report to court tomorrow to face the charge and may be levied with heavy fines to force her into compliance.

Christian News Network contacted Crestwood on Wednesday to learn where the congregation stands on homosexual behavior, and was advised by its Senior Pastor, Kory Wilcoxson, that the matter is not discussed because the assembly does not speak to “social and political issues.” He confirmed that Beshear is a member, but said that he does not regularly attend services due to his schedule as governor.

Wilcoxson advised that with matters such as homosexuality, he allows members to come to their own personal conclusions on whether a certain behavior is sinful.

“We believe that each person should be allowed to work out for themselves what Scripture says to them and how they interpret it,” he said. “We don’t take church-wide or denominational-wide stances.”"

______________________________________________________

BELOW:Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, right, is greeted by supporters outside the United States Federal Courthouse in Covington, Ky., Monday, July 20, 2015. Davis, who has said she cannot issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because it would violate her religious beliefs, is being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union on the behalf of two gay couples and two straight couples. Photo Credit: AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley______________________________________________________________

Davis has vowed never to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and has claimed she has the religious freedom to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court ruling and orders from the governor and state attorney general. “It’s a deep-rooted conviction; my conscience won’t allow me to do that,” Davis said. “It goes against everything I hold dear, everything sacred in my life.”

Grassroots Nullification: Ky. Clerk Says “No” to Homosexual “Marriage” Licenses

SEE: http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/21407-grassroots-nullification-ky-clerk-says-no-to-homosexual-marriage-licenses; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

The media don't have much to say about “sanctuary cities,” which defy constitutional federal immigration law. But when the matter is a moral-sanctuary locality or bureaucracy that defies the unconstitutional Obergefell faux-marriage ruling, it’s a different story.

And such is the story in Morehead, Kentucky, where a county clerk has responded to the Supreme Court’s constitutional trespass by refusing to issue marriage licenses — to anyone. As the New York Times reports:

Kim Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, who says her Christian faith bars her from authorizing same-sex marriages, has refused to issue any licenses, either to same-sex or heterosexual couples after the historic ruling in June in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. She has ignored a direct order from Gov. Steven L. Beshear that she do so.

On Wednesday, Judge David L. Bunning of United States District Court for Eastern Kentucky, ruling in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of four couples — two same-sex and two heterosexual — ordered Ms. Davis to resume issuing licenses. But lawyers for Ms. Davis immediately appealed and sought a stay; Thursday morning, Ms. Davis did not show up at work.

Davis isn’t alone in her opposition. In the wake of Obergefell, 60 Kentucky clerks signed a petition to Governor Beshear stating that they had religious objections to issuing faux-marriage licenses, although most complied with his directive for fear of job loss. And as the Times also tells us, “In Alabama, probate judges in 13 of 67 counties are, like Ms. Davis, declining to issue marriage licenses to anyone. One, Judge Nick Williams of Washington County, has urged the state justices to issue a ‘landmark ruling’ to defy the Supreme Court. And State Senator Greg Albritton is calling for the state to get out of the marriage license business.” In the latter it joins Mississippi, which also may remove itself from the marriage-license business.

Yet not everyone, even in Rowan County — one of Kentucky’s more conservative — stands with Davis. As the Associated Press reports in a clear attempt at emotional manipulation:

David Ermold broke down and cried in the county's judge-executive's office after he was denied a license to marry David Moore, his partner of 17 years.

"I will say that people are cruel, they are cruel, these people are cruel," Ermold said. "This is how gay people are treated in this country. This is what it's like. This is how it feels."

The county judge executive's secretary, Lois L. Hawkins, started to cry with him. She declined to comment, except to say it broke her heart and there was nothing she could do to help them.

One could wonder if those refusing to approve polygamists’ marriages are thought “cruel” and if tears are shed over the way they’re “treated in this country,” or if this is just another case of a politically favored group expecting, and receiving, preferential treatment.

Unfortunately, even many of those siding with Davis on marriage’s definitional aspect disagree with her on its legal one. This is due to a fundamental misunderstanding about American law. For example, joining a number of other capitulating state executives after Obergefell, Ohio governor John Kasich stated at the time that “our nation's highest court has spoken and we must respect its decision." But, question: Does a decision that doesn’t respect the Constitution deserve respect itself?

The idea here is that we’re a nation of laws, not men, so we must follow the law. But what is the law? If we’re simply going to abide by whatever judges rule — no matter how detached from legal reality — are we following the law or just lawyers? And once we’re following lawyers we are a nation of men, not laws.

Most have been conditioned to accept judges as final arbiters of law’s meaning; after all, judges settle things, don’t they? This standard would be fine were judges infallible oracles of wisdom, but the reality is, as Thomas Jefferson said, that they have “with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.” History attests to this, with the Supreme Court demonstrating time and again not intellectual consistency but continual contradiction; just consider the dichotomy between the Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education decisions.

This subordination of laws to men, of Constitution to judges, is brought into stark focus when considering that the latter’s ultimate-arbiter power was not granted to them by the Constitution — but by judges themselves: It was unilaterally declared in the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision. In other words, deference to it can be an example of accepting circular reasoning: How do I know the judges have their trumps-all power?

The judges told me so.

While homosexual activists celebrated after Obergefell and some group celebrates after every decision, ultimate-decider status for judges is nothing to celebrate. This warning was issued by none other than Thomas Jefferson, who said in 1819 that if it ever became accepted that courts have the final say on law’s meaning and that their determinations must constrain all three branches of government, our Constitution will have become a “felo de se” (a suicide pact) and our Supreme Court an “oligarchy.” And now it has reached the point where, as Antonin Scalia wrote in his scathing Obergefell dissent, we “allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine” and thus “violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.” The oligarchy reigns.

Yet there is a solution: nullification. This is simply when states declare that since a given federal action is unconstitutional, they will not abide by it. This may seem radical to many, but it’s nothing new. What do you think is happening with “sanctuary cities” and their refusal to enforce federal immigration laws or with localities that thumb their noses at federal drug laws? Nullification.

Also note that nullification is, as Jefferson instructed, the "rightful remedy" for any and all unconstitutional federal dictates. And this brings us to the real story here. It’s not that an intrepid county clerk here and there is defying lawless black-robed lawyers, but that governors and legislators refuse to lead the charge. They’re all too afraid of losing their jobs, losing their campaigns, losing their luxury, and losing respect. If only they were so afraid of losing their Republic.

____________________________________________________________

"Defying order, clerk won't give gay couple 

marriage license":

SEE: http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/kim-davis-rowan-county-clerk-denies-david-moore-and-david-ermold-marriage-license-defying-court-1.10735321; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

MOREHEAD, Ky. - A clerk's office turned away gay couples who sought marriage licenses on Thursday, defying a federal judge's order that said deeply held Christian beliefs don't excuse officials from following the law.

The fight in Rowan County began soon after the U.S. Supreme legalized gay marriage nationwide in June. County Clerk Kim Davis cited her religious beliefs and decided not to issue marriage licenses to any couple, gay or straight. Five couples sued in federal court, and legal experts likened the case to the resistance some local officials in the South put up five decades ago after the Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage.

"I will say that people are cruel, they are cruel, these people are cruel," said David Ermold, who was denied a license to marry his partner of 17 years.

The clerk's office rejected the couples' bid for licenses just hours after U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning ordered her to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling.

Davis wasn't at her office Thursday, but deputy clerk Nathan Davis said the office was advised by its attorneys with the Christian law firm Liberty Counsel to continue refusing same-sex couples as it appeals.

James Yates and William Smith Jr., a couple for nearly a decade, were the second pair turned away Thursday. They also were turned away a month ago.

They described a disconnect between the clerk's office and their experience in the community of Morehead, a college town they say has long been open and accepting. They held hands as they walked into the clerk's office, and gay rights activists shouted "Good luck!" from the street, holding signs reading "clerk not clergy" and "obey the law."

After the couple was denied, they joined the protesters.

"I still get frustrated sometimes, but then I take a deep breath and go on. I know it's going to get resolved. It's just a matter of when," Yates said.

In Kentucky, county clerks issue marriage licenses, and someone else must "solemnize" the marriage. Then the license can be filed with the county clerk.

Davis argued that issuing a same-sex marriage license that contains her signature is the same as her approving the marriage, which she said violates her Christian beliefs.

Judge Bunning rejected that argument in his ruling Wednesday, saying Davis has likely violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on the government establishing a religion by "openly adopting a policy that promotes her own religious convictions at the expenses of others."

"Davis remains free to practice her Apostolic Christian beliefs. She may continue to attend church twice a week, participate in Bible Study and minister to female inmates at the Rowan County Jail. She is even free to believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, as many Americans do," Bunning wrote. "However, her religious convictions cannot excuse her from performing the duties that she took an oath to perform as Rowan County Clerk."

Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear has told Kim Davis to issue licenses or resign.

Laura Landenwich, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the 28-page ruling reveals that the judge combed through Davis' legal arguments and rejected each. Bunning said that although couples could get marriage licenses elsewhere, "why should they be required to?"

He noted that the surrounding counties require 30 minutes or one hour of travel and that there are many "in this rural region of the state who simply do not have the physical, financial or practical means to travel."

Bunning said state law does not allow the county judge-executive to issue marriage licenses unless Davis is absent from her job, and Bunning refused to deem Davis absent because she has a religious objection.

After Yates and Smith were told that Kim Davis was on vacation Thursday, they marched to Rowan County Judge Executive Walter Blevins' office.

He explained that his office isn't equipped to issue licenses. He also said that because deputy clerks are at work, he wasn't sure his signature would be valid.

Blevins has been critical of Davis. He shook the couple's hands and told them: "I apologize that you had to come today and walk away empty-handed."