When public servants go on strike, here in the U.S., the usual pattern is that Republicans castigate them and Democrats support them. This pattern has been reversed in the bizarre case of Kim Davis, the infamous Kentucky county clerk who has steadfastly refused to issue marriage licenses on grounds of personal conscience.
There can be little doubt that Ms. Davis will go down in history as the George Wallace of our times, taking a firm stand in favor of tradition and against the imposition of equality, trying valiantly to bend back the moral arc of the history away from justice. She is in the wrong legally, factually, and morally. She should be impeached from public office and made to seek a new career. (I hear the conservative talk radio circuit pays reasonably well for newly-minted folk heroes, incidentally.)
With all that said, I can see no excuse for attacking her personal appearance or her marital history in the course of arguing against what she has been doing. The harm that Davis is doing to the people of Rowan County would be no less harmful if she were a fit young virgin, with flawless hair and a perfect smile.
The impulse to attack someone’s person when you meant to be attacking their ideas is nearly universal. I’ve seen it time and again, even in supposedly liberal and right-thinking private groups, and even in the sort of groups that pride themselves on awareness of informal logical fallacies. This reversion to the schoolyard is continually disheartening, but it’s never too late to grow up.
Even more popular than the memes mocking her appearance, however, are those going after her personal life.
While it is surely true that the main character depicted in the Christian gospels was far more concerned with condemning divorce than same-sex marriage, this does not make Davis’s marital history remotely relevant to the main question at hand here. If she had married her high school sweetheart and remained true from that day until this one, it would not make her grandstanding against LGBT equality any less immoral, illegal, or ignoble.
The harm done by Ms. Davis is the result of elevating her personal convictions above the law of the land. Both progressives and conservatives have lionized others who have done the same in the past: Chelsea Manning is considered a hero to many on the left, just as Roy Moore is to many on the far right. As recently as last month, my progressive friends were praising Greenpeace protesters for defying court orders in order to delay legal commerce.
There is a time and place for civil disobedience, of course, but public servants who have sworn to uphold the Constitution do not get to decide for themselves what that means. The courts have ruled, and they have made it abundantly clear what Davis must do and why. All the arguments we need have already been spelled out in the majority opinion of Obergefell v. Hodges. No amount of ad hominem directed at outstandingly obstinate individuals will serve to make those arguments any stronger.
