Governor of Kentucky changes marriage law to appease Kim Davis
Following a controversy surrounding Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis who went to jail rather than marry gay couples, the state’s Governor has made a change.
Governor Matt Bevin used an executive order to remove the necessity for clerks to print their names on marriage licences.
Davis went to jail for five days after ignoring a string of court orders instructing her to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples.
She argues that in requiring clerks to sign off on same-sex marriage licences, the state violates their religious beliefs.
The office of Kim Davis, despite being ordered not to by the courts, had previously crossed out the box for her to sign.
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They replaced her name with the name of the county.
This, however, raised a question over whether marriage licences issued without the clerk’s name would be legal.
Bevin’s executive order reads: “To ensure that the sincerely held religious beliefs of all Kentuckians are honored, Executive Order 2015-048 directs the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives to issue a revised marriage license form to the offices of all Kentucky County Clerks. The name of the County Clerk is no longer required to appear on the form.”
The Governor, a strong supporter of Davis, previously said he would help her out by stripping the names of all clerks off of marriage licenses.
He said: “One thing I will take care of right away, we will remove the names of county clerks from the marriage forms. That is going to be done.
“The argument that that can not be done is baloney.
“This is one way that we will remove something from the landscape that, frankly, doesn’t even need to be there.”
Davis herself has already removed her name from licenses – adding text which instead claim the licenses are ‘pursuant to federal court order’.
