The Turner Report: Cynthia Davis: Radical left wants to keep all Chri...: (From former Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O'Fallon, who is now an internet talk show host) Last May I was invited to attend the St. Charles C...
Davis is another legislature that is jumping on the "persecuted" Christian bandwagon. Cynthia Davis is the same State Representative that in 2009 wanted to do away with the Summer Lunch Program in Missouri schools because, I quote, "hunger can be a positive motivator." Yeah, because all a 9 year old poor kid needs is a little hunger to go out and get a job. That's a big F-You to parents and kids of parents who were hit hard by the recession just a year earlier.
Anyway, Davis is making the outrageous claim that "the left" is trying to do away with Christians in government and create a new government. Yeah, this is a woman people elect to government who is saying this. Of course she is referring to Kim Davis (no relation), who has been imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing to issue licences to gay couples. So, because the clerk is not doing her job, and is being penalized for defying court order, now Christians are being persecuted.
C. Davis tries to explain why there are Constitutional bases to fight against the "persecution" of Kim Davis. C. Davis lists four Constitutional reasons why Kim Davis, and thus all Christians, is being persecuted.
1) The Kentucky State Constitution says that marriage is between ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN. This, Kim Davis was upholding the Kentucky State Constitution.
FAIL: The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The Supreme Court ruled that banning gay marriage is against the protections within the Constitution. The reasoning is the same as former bans on mixed race marriage (whose opponents gave the exact same arguments against it as they do now for gay marriage), banning marriage for certain groups violates the right to their religion, privacy, and their 9th and 14th Amendment rights.
Thus, the Supreme Court's ruling trumps Kentucky's Constitution. Their one man, one woman amendment is a waste of ink. This is how America works, a Representative, even at the state level, should know this.
2) C. Davis then emphatically stresses that Supreme Court opinions do not create new laws. In fact, the Supreme Court can only declare a law unconstitutional and cannot ever create a new law.
FAIL: C. Davis throws out a Fallacy of Equivocation in this bit. She tries to be slick by putting the word opinion in all-caps. Why this is slick, is that the is trying to equivocate a court opinion with an emotive opinion. An emotive opinion is one that cannot be falsified, one that is solely personal preference. These opinions are such, "blue is the prettiest color," or Justin Bieber is a better singer than Justin Timberlake,"
You see, each court ruling is accompanied by an opinion by the judge. This is an opinion in the same way as a doctor uses it. The Judges opinion is his view on the correct course of action -- his ruling -- (a diagnosis for a doctor) based on facts presented (symptoms for a doctor) and how they fit together gleaned from arguments by the attorneys (or how the symptoms interact in the patient). These opinions make case precedent. Precedent is used to keep laws consistent, that way what will get you punished one day, is acceptable by another judge at another time.
Secondly, the Supreme Court cannot make a law. But it can interpret laws and declare laws unconstitutional. And that is what the Supreme Court did in this case, it interpreted existing laws and declared that discrimination against gays in regards to marriage is unconstitutional. So, no new laws were made, the Supreme Court only upheld existing laws.
3) C. Davis states that the governor of Kentucky should be able to order the release of Kim Davis, and that the gay-thing is a state issue, not a federal one. She then reiterates that Kim Davis would be breaking Kentucky law if she issued marriage licences to gay couples. In fact, C. Davis says that there is no federal law to counter the Kentucky law.
FAIL: First, C. Davis fails on whose "issue" it is. Kim Davis is a representative of the state of Kentucky. Disagreements between citizens and their state IS a federal problem! I do not mean the state of Kentucky disciplining Kim Davis, I mean the gay couples in conflict with the state of Kentucky. That is a federal issue, and a federal judge gave a lawful order for Kim Davis to comply with the law under the current interpretation of the Supreme Court. Kim Davis was not persecuted for refusing gay marriage, she was prosecuted for contempt of court!
Secondly, Kim Davis would break no law in issuing a gay marriage license. The reason is that the Supreme Court's ruling was that states cannot restrict marriage based on sexual orientation. That ruling nullified the Kentucky law. In other words, the Kentucky constitutional amendment is rendered null and void. It is NOT a law anymore.
Lastly, since Cynthia has yet to learn this, there is a federal law that trumps the Kentucky law. It is called the Constitution of the United States. The laws are the 9th and 14th Amendments. The 9th says that rights not given to the government belong to the people, and the 14th says that a citizen cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process and extends the law to all citizens. In other words, states cannot discriminate against people when they write laws. Laws like no interracial marriage... or gay marriage.
4) Cynthia (I cannot continue to give her a formal moniker, as she has lost all of my respect at this point) then comes up with an absurd scenario of the Governor of Kentucky sending the national guard to arrest the federal judge and "rescue" Kim Davis. Then she reiterates that the federal judge had no legal right to order Kim to do her job. Lastly, Cynthia pleads that if nothing is done, then states won't be able to write their own laws.
FAIL: Yeah, a state that rises up against the federal government is a conservative's wet dream. But the governor of Kentucky had no legal ground to send troops to "rescue" Kim, let alone arrest a federal judge.
Again, the judge was in the right, Kim wasn't. I won't reiterate why, I've already done so.
The bit about stopping the federal government lest states be powerless. She makes not only a false dichotomy (either we fight against this one law, or states won't be able to pass laws any more), but also she over exaggerates. No, Cynthia, gays being able to marry is not going to nullify state constitutions, just like ending Jim Crow didn't.
5) Here, Cynthia offers some Christian-rant about how screwing doesn't require a license. And if sex doesn't require one, then gays don't need one.
FAIL: Neither do straights. Straight people do not need to get married either. But then some people, such as Kim Davis, like getting married so much they do it four times. Basically, Cynthia lays out every bigoted reason Christians have against gays in one paragraph. It's a pedantically written, vitriolic prose that perfectly captures the bigotry taught by many Christian churches.
6) Cynthia has the audacity to claim that gays should stand up for Kim Davis as well. Her reasoning is that the issue is not gay rights, it is civil rights. She states that if gays do not fight against barring Kim Davis from refusing to issue licenses then we all will lose our freedom of religion, state constitutions and civil rights.
FAIL: Here, Cynthia has just failed as a human being. It is her bronze age religious beliefs that pit her against gays. If you want to sit around thinking all gays are bad, fine. If you want to sit around thinking that all women need to be subordinate to a man (which is in the same gay-hating book) then fine. If all of that is in your religion, so be it. You have the right to think that way. What you do NOT have the right to do is interfere with anyone else's right to religion including their rejection of religion in general, and rejection of YOUR religion specifically.
In America, your right to punch ends where the other guy's nose begins. Kim Davis is abusing her powers to punch out gays. Sorry, Cynthia, sorry Kim, but your religious beliefs do not entitle you to force others to live with your bigoted and immoral values. This is doubly true for agents acting on behalf of the government. You see, Cynthia, in America, our civil liberties are tied directly with enfranchisement with the system. When you treat a certain class of people differently, it runs the risk of disenfranchising them, of creating a second class citizenry. Plessy v Ferguson institutionalized racism in America for about 70 years. It has taken decades of fighting to desegregate the US, and fully enfranchise blacks and other racial minorities in the US. Cynthia, your bigoted rage against gays and gay marriage is no different than your Jim Crow loving predecessors.
George Takei said it best in a recent Facebook post (emphasis mine):
Well this is a bit of a circus. So let us be clear: This woman is no hero to be celebrated. She broke her oath to uphold the Constitution and defied a court order so she could deny government services to couples who are legally entitled to be married. She is entitled to hold her religious beliefs, but not to impose those beliefs on others. If she had denied marriage certificates to an interracial couple, would people cheer her? Would presidential candidates flock to her side? In our society, we obey civil laws, not religious ones. To suggest otherwise is, simply put, entirely un-American.
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