marriage license
Image via Carter County Detention Center, Ky./RNS
Kim Davis, the embattled Kentucky county clerk at the center of a dispute over gay marriage and religious liberty, is out of jail but “needs time to rest” and won’t return to work until Sept. 11 or Sept. 14, her lawyers said Sept. 9.
Liberty Counsel, the legal group representing Davis, said she plans to spend time with family after the six-day ordeal in the Carter County Detention Center.
The Rowan County clerk was jailed on Thursday for refusing to comply with a federal judge’s order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. While she was being held, her deputies complied with the order, which satisfied the court.
Photo: Marriage license, © MNStudio / Shutterstock.com
A federal court in Indiana has rejected atheists' requests to preside at wedding ceremonies, saying only clergy or public officials are licensed to solemnize marriages.
A lawsuit filed by the Indiana chapter of the Center for Inquiry argued that an Indiana law that requires marriages to be “solemnized” — made official by signing a marriage license — only by clergy, judges, mayors or local government clerks violates the Constitution.
But Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana ruled on Nov. 30 that marriage has religious roots. Therefore, government regulation of marriage is an act of religious accommodation — not endorsement — and protected by the Constitution.