Kim Davis has defenders
Of her freedom, but I stress:
This fundamental freedom is
Her freedom to oppress!
Some candidates for president
Are charging to her side—
They claim she has god-given rights
That cannot be denied!
She has the right to take a stand
The right to choose her fights
The right to pound the bible and…
Deny another’s rights!
Kim Davis has some special rights
Gay couples clearly don’t;
A right, of course, gets granted—
Grant gay marriage? Davis won’t.
Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins (I find it refreshing to find out that there is no definitive source, merely legend, for the source of this beautiful idea). Kim Davis is, of course, the government; she is doing her best to convince us that she, the person who hands out the county’s permission to marry, is not the government but just another schmuck like us. No. She is the government. She is overreach. She is Big Brother. She is the camera in your bedroom.
As mentioned before, small-government politicians are elbowing each other black and blue to stand arm-in-arm with Davis. They reflexively defend a christian’s freedom, without thinking that in this case, plainly and simply, the christian is the oppressive government goon.
But Kim Davis is quite clearly playing the role of the oppressive government goon (all goons are playing roles–just watch “Slapshot”); Davis is the oppressor, not the oppressed. Everything she claims she fights against, she embodies. If she could see it, I suspect her head would explode.
The employer sets the rules, the employees follow them. This isn’t a hard concept.
“Small government” implies the government’s interest would only be about secular law.
Davis wants to use government to get people to practice her religion.
I find it refreshing to find out that there is no definitive source, merely legend, for the source of this beautiful idea
I’d always seen it attributed to Roger Baldwin of the ACLU, but your link cites instances going back well before his time, so I have to cede yet another “fact”.
In actual point of application, should you see a fist swinging at short range towards your nose, that’s technically assault and you do have the right to block, duck, & or swing back before it arrives (technically, that would be battery).
There is a school of thought which suggests that this had, in fact, already happened.
Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins
Says who?
Your right to swing your fist ends only when you no longer can enforce that right. The state and especially the modern state monopolizes force to such an extent that depend on it for enforcement of any “right,” which is why propositions like the above seem true or appealing.
There is a parallel between Davis and others who have disobeyed laws they considered “unjust”: disobedience is the last means of protest when all other civil avenues have failed. Societal rebuke or praise determines whether we view their cause as worthy or unworthy.
Kim Davis just wants to be allowed to have her religion and her right to the free exercise thereof. And, as Pope Francis is reported to have said after his recent meeting with her, the right to conscientiously object to being forced to act contrary to one’s religious beliefs is a necessary part of religious freedom. So those who drafted her and are forcing her to remain in a position of public trust where she must compromise either her religious principles, or her sworn duty to uphold the law and the Constitution, should just back off and let her resign…
What’s that you say? She doesn’t want to resign? She wants to remain in office and prevent people who need valid marriage licenses from getting them, while she keeps drawing a public salary for pretending to be the county clerk? Ah, then it obviously has nothing to do with religious freedom or conscientious objection, but is just another modern illustration of the old story from Aesop, or more likely Lucien, or the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas — “Jesus said, ‘Woe to the Pharisees, for they are like a dog sleeping in the manger of oxen, for neither does he eat nor does he let the oxen eat'”.
So Woe to Kim Davis.