So the gal who has been married four times and answers only to God goes to jail. As a martyr or a heroine? Oh, we do want to avoid seating her on either of those thrones, but some have already done so, handing her a few extra cushions. As an apostolic Christian? Who are they anyway? Google around and you'll find explanations like "We use the King James Bible."
So do I, folks! I really enjoy reading it even though I'm an atheist who occasionally prays, usually to geographically appropriate deities. When we were in Delos last summer, I sent a few entreaties to Apollo, whose hometown and place of birth that island is. The King James Bible contains the most beautiful poetry in the English language (better than Shakespeare! Okay, well . . . probably yes) and is conveniently, for the very religious, breathtakingly inconsistent and, in parts, unutterably vague. You can pull out just about anything to prove what you feel like proving that day. If you want to know what the bible "really" says, in English, your local pastor or priest or goddess will tell you to consult a host of modern translations, The New American, the New Revised Standard. If you're going for the poetry as opposed to the rules, these translations are not worth reading.
If you're going for the religion, they're not all that hot, either. Not if you want "definitive." Not if you want to know whether you've got a chance at heaven or might be headed straight to the other place. If you're in a sexy mood, read the Song of Solomon in the King James version (Kim Davis's face suggests to me that she--as we used to say back in the seventies--needs to get laid real bad.) If you're going for a guide to punishments, Leviticus'll get you there, but trust me, you don't want to go for that eye-for-eye cut-and-slice school of decapitation and mutilation. Christians are not ISIS, right? I hope not.
Maybe the question is not whether we're dealing with some legitimate form of Christianity but whether we're dealing with a sane person. Or just a sad, desperate woman who can't think of any way to control her fears or her actions except by taking a frantic stab at controlling other people.
Alternatively, are we dealing not with one sad sack of a county clerk, but with something like the end of miscegenation law, which, sadly, only ended fifteen years ago in Alabama? Many a commentator has compared the case of the Lovings--the interracial couple whose marriage was validated by the Supreme Court in 1967--to the current crisis of gay marriage. Mrs. Loving had to be talked into supporting gay marriage, folks, but eventually she did. As I recall, she had to overcome what she thought of as her Christian scruples. She did support gay marriage in the end.
Does Kim Davis need a doctor or a pastor? Or just a good lay? I'm praying that--before I see one more poster-waving protester calling her a heroine for defending God's will--that Ms. Davis gets one of the above. And that she learns to live and let live. Hey, send in Anita Bryant! She sure changed her tune! Remember the sixties babe who promoted Florida oranges and said that God wanted "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve?" She was just going through a bad marriage. She's said that. It would be Christian of her to visit Ms. Davis, homemade cookies and sympathy in hand, and bring Ms. Davis to her senses.
P.S. Rachel Held Evans, please weigh in.
P.P.S. Hey, Rachel Held Evans DID weigh in, and Daily Kos reprinted her tweet, and I'm copying it here: "No one's being jailed for practicing her religion. Someone's being jailed for using the government to force others to practice her religion." Thank you, God! I should say Thank you, Rachel! (What's the difference, right? Wordsworth and Emerson would see no difference.) God's the voice inside of you telling you to do no harm and take care of people. Which reminds me, on another subject, President Obama, when are you going to take care of refugees the way we in Germany are taking care of them?
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