MOREHEAD, Ky. -- At least three gay couples received marriage licenses Friday in Rowan County, embracing and celebrating as the defiant county clerk, Kim Davis, remained jailed because she has refused to issue the licenses or allow her deputies to hand them out.
Through her attorney, Davis asserted that the marriage licenses issued to gay couples are void and "not worth the paper they are written on" because she didn't authorize them.
Marriage licenses in Kentucky usually have the elected clerk's signature on them; those handed out Friday lacked any signature. The Rowan County attorney and lawyers for the gay couples said they are legal and valid nevertheless. When U.S. District Judge David Bunning -- who ordered Davis jailed for contempt -- was asked if the licenses will be considered valid without Davis' authorization, he said it was up to the gay couples to take that chance.
William Smith Jr., 33, and James Yates, 41, a couple for nearly a decade, were the first through the door. Deputy clerk Brian Mason congratulated the couple, shook their hands and accepted their fee of $35.50. Yates then rushed across the courthouse steps to hug his mother.
"Civil rights are civil rights, and they are not subject to belief," said Yates, who had been denied a license several times previously.
A crowd of supporters cheered and a street preacher rained down words of condemnation as they left. Smith said he felt "elated," adding, "I think it shows that equality is everywhere."
He and Yates could have gone to another county for a license, but "this is where we live," Smith said. "This is where we pay taxes. This is our home."
A second couple, Timothy and Michael Long, got their license later Friday, enduring a taunt of "More sodomites getting married?" from a man inside the office.
The Longs did not respond, and a worker told the man to leave.
A third couple, April Miller and Karen Roberts, got their license around midday.
"Now we can breathe. I'm still ecstatic and happy. I just can't wait to get married now," Roberts said.
Signature At Issue
Bunning indicated Davis, 49, would remain in jail at least a week, saying he would revisit his decision after the deputy clerks have had time to comply with his order to issue licenses.
Davis' attorney, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, said he's preparing to appeal Bunning's contempt finding as one of several legal challenges on her behalf.
Staver told reporters after meeting with Davis behind bars that his client is in very good spirits and is prepared to stay as long as it takes to uphold her religious freedoms. Davis "has already been doing Bible studies with herself" in jail, he said.
"She's not going to resign; she's not going to sacrifice her conscience, so she's doing what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, which is to pay the consequences for her decision," Staver said.
"So however long that lasts, in terms of the consequences, she is prepared to accept them."
Davis' husband, Joe Davis, 49, also went to the courthouse Friday, holding a sign saying "Welcome to Sodom and Gomorrah."
He also said his wife was in good spirits after her first night in jail. "She has done her job," Joe Davis said. "Just because five Supreme Court judges make a ruling, it's not a law."
Asked if she would resign, he said, "Oh, God, no. She's not going to resign at all. It's a matter of telling Bunning he ain't the boss."
When asked if he viewed her as a "martyr," Joe Davis said: "No, I view her as my wife. I love her. I'd do her time for her."
Kim Davis, elected in November as a Democrat, has refused to issue any marriage licenses rather than comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June legalizing gay marriage nationwide. After ordering her to jail, Bunning told her six deputy clerks that they, too, faced potential fines or jail time if they similarly refuse. All but one -- the clerk's son, Nathan Davis -- agreed to issue the licenses.
Defenders of Kim Davis, and some politicians, called for changes in state law to make "reasonable accommodations" so that Davis can keep her job without violating her beliefs as an Apostolic Christian.
Staver said, for example, that Davis would agree to record licenses issued by the clerk's office, rather than in the name of the clerk, herself. Matt Bevin, the Republican candidate for governor, proposed a license form that couples could obtain online, without a county clerk's involvement.
He suggested that with an executive order, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear could change all the forms in Kentucky so that none require a clerk's signature or say they've been issued under a clerk's authority.
Kentucky lawmakers won't meet until January, unless the governor calls a special session, which Beshear has said he doesn't want to do. Legislators have said that when they do meet, they will have many changes to make to adapt the state's civil code to the Supreme Court's ruling.
Davis was one of a small number of local officials across the country who refused to grant licenses to any couples, straight or gay, after the top court's ruling. Local couples sued her, and Bunning ordered her to issue them.
Davis asked first the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then the Supreme Court, to delay his order from taking effect while she appealed. Both higher courts refused, but she continued to defy the judge's order. On Thursday, Bunning found her in contempt of court and ordered her to jail.
Bunning, an appointee of President George W. Bush, had offered to release Davis if she promised not to interfere with her employees issuing the licenses, but she refused.
Biblical Comparisons
Across the country, supporters of Davis reached for biblical heroes, comparing her to Silas and Daniel, imprisoned for their faith and rescued by God.
Alabama Probate Judge Nick Williams said he called Davis the night before she was jailed, telling her he admires her resolve, and that he, too, would rather go to prison than resign or relent. His resolve has yet to be tested, as no same-sex couple has sought a license from his office in rural Washington County, home to about 17,000 people.
Still, Williams compared Davis to Daniel, the Old Testament hero who was thrown into a lion's den for refusing to abandon his faith, but with God's blessing, emerged unscathed.
"I hate the fact that she went to jail, but maybe, just maybe, this will wake America up," Williams said.
"This is what the other side wants," said Kenneth Upton, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, a law firm specializing in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) matters, pointing to the image of Davis in handcuffs. "This is a biblical story, to go to jail for your faith. We don't want to make her a martyr to the people who are like her, who want to paint themselves as victims."
The American Civil Liberties Union, representing couples Davis turned away, asked that she be fined rather than imprisoned, in part to avoid "a false persecution story," said Dan Canon, one of the attorneys. Bunning reasoned that Davis would be unmoved by monetary penalties.
"I think he was trying to make an example of Kim Davis, and he may well do so," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which lobbies against gay marriage.
"Courage breeds courage, especially when it comes from unlikely places. She may be the example that sparks a firestorm of resistance across this country."
Chris Hartman, director of Louisville's Fairness Campaign, dismissed the small number of holdout clerks as a "blip on the radar of civil rights."
Several Republican presidential candidates mostly took her side. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, also a former Baptist minister, announced he would visit Davis in Kentucky next week and said "we must end the criminalization of Christianity."
But former technology executive Carly Fiorina and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Davis should follow the law or resign. And even some conservative veterans of religious-freedom fights worry that Davis makes a bad case for martyrdom.
Her insistence on keeping her elected position while ignoring federal court orders has been sharply criticized in the National Review and The American Conservative, and Russell Moore and Andrew Walker, who serve on the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote Friday that "religious liberty itself will be imperiled" if people "cannot differentiate between the freedom to exercise one's religion and the responsibility of agents of the state to carry out the law."
Still, Perkins and others promise there are dozens of people like Kim Davis ready to go to jail in defense of their religious freedoms.
In addition to Alabama's Williams, Clerk Molly Criner for Irion County, Texas, population 1,500, also declared through the Liberty Counsel that she would issue no licenses.
She said on Friday that no same-sex couples have asked for one. She refused to say whether she would issue them or opt to go to jail instead.
Information for this article was contributed by Adam Beam and Claire Galofaro of The Associated Press and by Richard Fausset, John Mura and Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times.
A Section on 09/05/2015