Kim Davis. Is There A Pattern Emerging Here?

Great Debates
1

Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who won’t issue gay marriage licenses. I actually almost respected her at first, alright maybe from a distance. (As many of you may know, I am gay, and of course very much in favor of certain causes, like gay marriage.)

But I just saw a report on ABC’s Nightline. Did you know she has been divorced 4 times? And (according to the report), has repeatedly committed adultery?

Anyways, I won’t rag on Davis anymore. That would be better suited to the Pit. But am I wrong in thinking there is a pattern emerging here?

Moral conservatives are only against things that don’t concern them. I think, in fact, it is the case, probably most of the time. Am I wrong?

I know (for example) no-fault divorces were once illegal in the USA. Yet no clerk (that I’ve heard of, in the media) has ever refused to issue a divorce decree. Like one comedian said, if we could get radical conservatives to become gay or need an abortion, everything would be okay.

Anyways, I’m not just venting here. I really want to know if my premise is flawed. I seem to find evidence most moral conservatives are hypocrites. Am I wrong?

:):):):slight_smile:

2

It’s all there in the Pit Thread Jim. I dunno if there’s really anything to debate here, but all the best!

3

I never post in the Pit. And I rarely ever even go there.

I think there is a debate here. But I do have to admit, it is a topic that makes me emotional too:).

4

I do feel that there’s a lot of “cafeteria Christianity” going on. People claim to be following the Bible while choosing which parts of the Bible they like and ignoring the parts they disagree with.

Christian belief is that Jesus freed people from having to follow the old laws of the Bible. That’s why Christians don’t believe they need to eat kosher food for example. But the text generally cited to justify opposition to homosexuality is from Leviticus - the same source for the other laws that Christians say are no longer relevant.

But the biblical prohibition against divorce is from the New Testament. Jesus himself explicitly said divorce wasn’t allowed.

5

Yes, this is a completely new phenomenon never before seen in the history of mankind.

6

Possibly you are. Naturally, when a moral conservative turns out to be a hypocrite, we get to her about it. But for every vocal anti-SSM adulterer, there might be 99 (or any other number) of vocal anti-SSM persons who are not adulterers. We don’t get to hear about them.

So the evidence that this moral conservative, or these moral conservatives, are hypocrites is not evidence that most moral conservatives are hypocrites. To make that claim you need to have a plausible estimate of the number of moral conservatives, plus a plausible tot of those who have been found to be hypocrites.

And there’s another point. I haven’t watched any programmes about Kim Davis (and don’t intend to) but my not-very-firm impression is that she seems to have lived a somewhat chaotic romantic life until a few years back, when she “found God”. Somebody who used to behave in a particular fashion but now no longer does is not a hypocrite for denouncing the behaviour that they themselves used to engage in; they are someone who has had a change of heart. They are only hypocritical if they denounce the behaviour while continuing to engage in it.

7

Well, we do see that the states with higher concentrations of “moral conservatives” have higher rates of divorce. That is, if we define divorce as “adultery”.

That is my understanding as well, loath as I am to defend her in any way. But the OP is making the mistake of drawing broad conclusions based on very thin and faulty evidence. And even the data about divorce I mentioned above is indirect since it doesn’t tie specific people to specific behaviors.

8

Have you noticed that most of the women who are against abortion are women you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place, man? There’s such balance in nature. – George Carlin

Stranger

9

You mustn’t forget, that stupid bint has been of her current creed since only 2011.
She’s been saved, man, and none of the shit she did before 2011 counts.

10

Why would you define divorce as adultery? Remarriage, sure, but divorce?

11

I am a member of an evangelical church and I also belong to a small group of couples from that church who meets regularly to socialize and discuss our lives and faith. This group comprises six couples. Four of the couples are in long-term first marriages, in one couple the husband has an ex-wife and a grown child from his first marriage, and then there’s me and my wife. Each of us has an ex-spouse who is a parent to our children, and each of us has a deceased second spouse. This is the third marriage for my wife and me. We were married by the senior pastor of our church, who was aware of this history when he performed the ceremony.

In Matthew 19, Jesus says “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

As support for same-sex marriage in the US grew, and well after I had had my personal epiphany on the subject, I attempted to raise the subject with my small group, using the remarriage= adultery logic.

One of the ways that anti-SSM Christians justify singling out homosexuality as different from other sins is that homosexual sex, in their minds, is an ongoing, chosen sin. Other, “acceptable” Christians may sin on a regular basis, but they are trying to not sin. Homosexuals, by continuing to have sex within their relationship, are choosing to sin.

Well, I tried to explain, so are my wife and I, according to Jesus. Why is our marriage OK, and a gay marriage is not? The only argument they had that even approached coherence was that the physical acts that make up our sex life are biblically OK, but the context is not. They say that homosexual acts are intrinsically not OK, regardless of context.

This strikes me as exactly the sort of utter horseshit that Jim B. is detecting. In my view, it’s not hypocrisy so much as it is a willingness to be much more understanding of sins which they can envision themselves being involved in, and completely unsympathetic to sins which don’t even theoretically attract them. I think that they can picture themselves divorced, and realize that they would probably want to remarry if that happened, and feel that that would somehow be OK with God, despite what they plainly read in Matthew. Besides, they know and like me and my wife, and we’re not icky. :rolleyes: Maybe that is hypocrisy after all.

12

Crotalus, thank you for the honest, thoughtful post.

I’m curious how this thinking/experience has affected the way you and your wife feel about your evangelical church and your social group? As a nonbeliever, I’m always surprised when folk adopt a “cafeteria” approach to a hardline branch of Christianity - which impresses me as somewhat inconsistent/hypocritical, instead of pursuing more liberal alternatives.

13

I think that’s a good analysis. But in Kim Davis’ case, I wonder if there isn’t something more going on too.

She’s got three divorces behind her, at least one of them after a quite short amount of time. Her romantic life is not an area in which she’s been very successful at all.

Many people (whatever their religious position) might suspect her of being a bit of a fuckup (“the common factor in your failed relationships is YOU!”) In Christian terms, she’s a repentant sinner. In strict Fundamentalist terms, that may be the defining feature of her church life. She gets to be The Repentant Sinner to everyone - forever. That can’t be a lot of fun.

But here’s this incredibly divisive issue, on which the church she attends probably has very strong opinions … and now she doesn’t have to be The Repentant Sinner any more, she can be The Heroic Martyr. On that supposition, all her failed marriages are actually the key to understanding why she’s doing this at all. She has a burden of proof on her. She can redeem herself through suffering - and the more she suffers, the better she can feel about her own life

14

I’ve come to the conclusion that the American conservative movement has become a home for individuals who have no genuine curiosity about anything or empathy for anyone other than people like themselves, but yet feel the need to have an answer for everything. No mysteries allowed in the universe, no complexities allowed in life. Stupid people, un-curious people. Sarah Palin was the trailblazer who kicked open the door for them to emerge proudly and loudly. Kim Davis is just the latest to make headlines, and even though she doesn’t share Palin’s party affiliation, they’re cut from exactly the same cloth.

Science is too hard for them to wrap their head around, so they choose to ignore it (climate change, evolution).

Adjusting to people from other countries and cultures is too hard, so they become xenophobic (anti-immigration, anti-refugee).

They don’t have good wages or certain benefits at work, so why should *those *greedy bastards have them (anti-union).

Choosing to learn how our government operates is way too difficult, so they become “TAX BAD!” anti-government types (Tea Party).

Being able to look down at people with less than they have boosts their ego, so they rail against the poor and social safety net programs.

People whose sexuality or gender don’t fit into their neat little box are completely weird and sick, so they have no right to live like we live.

For these people, there is no grey in the world. It’s all black or white, good or bad, winners or losers. And there’s no desire to learn about a topic beyond a Facebook meme, bumper sticker, shouting points, relevant Bible verses or their own memory of how something “used to be.” It becomes a movement of “gimme mine, but if I don’t understand it then fuck it, blow it to kingdom come or make it illegal.” And the kicker is, they have absolutely no desire to really genuinely learn anything. That’s also why college and teachers have become demonized by this bunch. These represent genuine learning.

Kim Davis is one of these people. Or maybe she’s just making a case for a billion dollar book deal. Who the heck knows?

15

Dinsdale, my journey from Republican to bleeding-heart liberal over the past fifteen years has caused a lot of thought and discussion for my wife and me about how we fit in to our church and our small group.

I believe that every Christian is a cafeteria Christian. I believe that there is no way to equally apply everything in the bible, or even everything in the new testament. Even the most fundamental of the fundamentalists have to make choices about what to apply to their lives and what to ignore.

Leaving a church is a difficult thing, in part because a church is many things. It is, in many cases, a branch of a denomination. It is a site for public worship for a community of people. It is a social center. It is center for various charitable works. For us, it is also a group of close friends whom we love, but with whom we have some pretty fundametal areas of disagreement. I would like to remain engaged in the discussions we have been having, even though they sometimes feel pretty futile. If that becomes untenable, for instance if the small group becomes unable to tolerate my views, I will move on.

Aspidistra, I think that’s a brilliant take on Kim Davis, one that had not occurred to me.

16

They just seem extraordinarily - in the modern age almost inexplicably - parochial.

Like the US is a Lost World up on a plateau somewhere.

It quite interesting; it feels like some Americans are increasingly ‘international’ with influences ranging from Internet message boards and non-US media through to exposure to foreign cultures through Youtube and Netflix. Whole bunch of stuff.

Yet a lot of the US isn’t interested, perhaps fixating on Church or Obama’s birth cert.

17

That’s how my conservative christian mother sees it. Somewhere in my teens I left her catholic church to become a non-believer and also started voting democrat.
To this day she still blames the University of Wisconsin education system for brainwashing me.

18

Great insight. But… what was the basis of their belief that gay sex was a sin in the first place? What did Jesus ever say about it? And if your only source is the OT, then as others have noted, there’s all sorts of stuff forbidden in the OT, including dietary laws.

19

Jesus, as far as I know, was silent on the subject. Romans chapter 1 (here’s the whole chapter for context) verses 26 and 27 are the clearest New Testament negative comments that I know of.

[QUOTE=Paul]
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
[/QUOTE]
I haven’t run into anyone who is willing to fully engage the somewhat enigmatic agency of God in those verses. It’s enough for most people who *want *to be against homosexuality that the verses seem to pretty clearly say that homosexual acts aren’t right.

20

Evangelicals, by definition, see themselves as rescued from sin, and feel a responsibility to rescue others from sin. Whether others feel like being rescued from sin is not a consideration.

Superficially it does look like the worst hypocrisy, but I think she’s sincere (albeit entirely wrong).

Also, I imagine that every since the SCOTUS decision, her church and friends have expressed plainly that as county clerk, they expected her to play the role of Anti-Gay Rosa Parks if the opportunity should present. Given the choice between social ostracism and low-stakes celebrity martyrdom, her actions are not in the least surprising.