Clerk jailed for refusal to issue marriage licenses says conscience is ‘clean’

An attorney for Kentucky clerk Kim Davis says she has a “clean conscience” as she sits in jail for contempt because she refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, said Friday that the licenses that were handed out Friday are void and “not worth paper that they are written on.” At least three gay couples received licenses in Rowan County from Davis’ deputies on Friday. Staver says Davis will appeal the contempt order.

People shouldn’t have to go through what we’ve been through just to get a basic right.

Timothy Long, who got his marriage license today with his partner, Michael

Emotions have run high on all sides, and Davis and an attorney for one of the four couples who sued said they had received death threats. The judge also reportedly received a death threat. Outside the courthouse in Morehead, Ky., where the clerk’s office is located, about 40 people demonstrated — far fewer than the 200 protesters on Thursday at the federal courthouse in Ashland, where Davis was found in contempt. She is waiting for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, Ohio, to rule on her request to set aside that ruling. In denying the request for a stay on the order, the appeals court said there was little chance she would prevail.

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