Kim Davis & the Manufacturing of a Hero

Kim Davis is a hero — just not mine. Davis became a media sensation (and political gold!) when, as a Kentucky clerk, she was jailed for refusing to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples. Bucolic Rowan County became ground zero in the Religious Right’s latest salvo in their imaginary war on Christianity, Supreme Court decision be damned and those who support it literally be damned.

On Sept. 7, a cheerful and tearful Davis emerged from jail to the rousing tune of Eye of the Tiger and, like a rock star performing for screaming fans, proclaimed, “We serve a living God!”?

Kim does not serve a living God; she serves the Religious Right’s political agenda. Apoplectic that their power is evaporating, evangelicals needed a hero to galvanize their rage into a visible force. Their God sent Kim Davis, not perfect but meeting the necessary requirements of bigotry, an exploitable situation, and greed. She earns – without doing her job – $80k a year in the 47th poorest state in the Union where a woman earns an average of $20k. Weighing her choices (“Hmm … God? Or $80k? God? Or $80k?), she stuck with the $80k. Davis didn’t become a hero from a Joseph Campbell-like journey traveled by Luke Skywalker or Katniss or Frodo. She was manufactured with all the political chicanery at the rich fingertips of the Republican Right abetted by the insatiable media machinery.

The marketing phase of this new product kicked off with a makeover. When Davis returned to work, gone were over-applied hair products and the too-tight, polyester, full-length skirt with horizontal stripes. Her hair was softer and she wore a decent red top, black skirt, and stylish new glasses. On September 17, when husband Jim Davis appeared in Nashville on the steps of the Capitol building in front of frothing supporters to launch the Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act, gone were his bib overalls and camouflage ball-cap. He wore a blue shirt and slacks. (If passed, this state bill would attempt to nullify the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision.)

Davis added momentum to her trumped-up plight during a television interview with ABC News taped on September 21. She said she still can’t (won’t!) sign same-sex licenses because “they’re not valid in God’s eyes,” and that she has given no one authority to do so. She feels she should keep her job because she’s good at it. Maybe, if she did her job. (Check out Randy Rainbow’s satirical Kim Davis Cell Block Tango on YouTube, a re-write of the song from the musical Chicago with the staccato punches of “Job, Bitch, Hypocrite, Nuh-huh, Huckabee, Bigot.”) If your conscience is so bothered, resign and end your charade.

But the Davis product will be kept in the public eye for years to come. Her personal legal wrangling — and the legality of licenses issued in Davis’ absence — may ratchet up to the US Supreme Court. According to the BBC, the Davis legal team, Liberty Counsel, has a long history of anti-gay rights cases and has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Davis will not pay a nickel for hundreds of thousands of legal bills, and litigation will go on and on and on. Riding on her coattails, more legislative shenanigans like the Tennessee Bill will be introduced in the near future.

Predictably, Davis will notch more political candidates on her belt, but avuncular mentor Mike Huckabee may not be willing to share with the salivating Cruz Camp. As in Nashville, expect more testimonial proselytizing from the newly manufactured power couple. On September 21, USA Today reported that Davis “has signed a seven-figure book deal with Forever Faith Publishing.” I’m a Survivor analyzes her agonizing moral dilemma during her nights in Gethsemane, and will be released before Christmas with “advance orders from Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club already flooding in.” Huckabee penned the forward and will join Davis on the book tour after the duo’s scheduled appearance on Fox Noise’s The O’Reilly Factor in October.

No one has denied Davis her choice of worship, yet the distracting and inaccurate message that her Constitutional right has been denied blares from the evangelical pulpit.

Elected as a Democrat, changing political parties may be in Davis’ future, but not integrity, nor giving up big bucks (a page out of the Palin book, The Idiot’s Guide to Making Millions), nor gathering more fodder for her book, and most importantly, not lording her discrimination over her constituents. Davis makes Peyton Place look like a nunnery. Defending herself from accusations of being a hypocrite and homophobe (if the horizontal stripes fit, wear them), and since she’s been married four times and birthed bastard children (all damned according to her Bible), Davis said during the ABC taping, “I’m forgiven. Washed clean.” During her reported religious rapture, she skipped her Savior’s admonitions to render unto Caesar and not cast stones.

Evangelicals pick and choose what serves their bigoted taste.

No one has denied Davis her choice of worship, yet the distracting and inaccurate message that her Constitutional right has been denied blares from the evangelical pulpit. Imagine a Muslim clerk refusing to sign Davis’ fourth application for a marriage license because her conscience and her Quran decree divorce an abomination. (Hmm … there’s a familiar word.) All jihad would break lose! As county clerk, Davis probably signed marriage licenses to adulterers, liars, and thieves, folks clearly outlined as sinners in her Ten Commandments. Apparently,those sinners are exempt from Davis’ judgment while legally unsanctioned same-sex husbands and wives are not. As my born-again Christian brother informed me, believers have the moral authority to pass judgment on non-believers based on the facts that their God is the only true God and that their feces do not elicit an unpleasant odor. (I added that last reason.)

A manufactured product meets a need, real or imagined. Davis is now the darling hero of the Religious Right, both void of shame and common decency. She began her ascension like a Valkyrie to a modern day Wagnerian anthem for underdogs, the aforementioned Eye. Co-writers of the 1982 Survivor megahit in Rocky III have clarified that the Davis rally used the song without authorization; rumors of an impending lawsuit against Uncle Huck and Kim have yet to materialize. On Facebook, one wrote, “I would not grant her the rights to use Charmin!”

LGBT rivals such as evangelicals don’t just believe they’re right and everyone else is wrong. Their behaviors imply, “Believe what I believe, or get out of my way. I am the better person, and you will burn in hell!” Rising to their challenge, we can each be our own hero, not as a manufactured and manipulated hero, but as an individual who lives courageously. The future of the LGBT movement in this nation will depend on you.