I have had little empathy with Kim Davis, as I've argued in numerous commentaries. It does not mean that I agree with the two Supreme Court decisions reversing traditional state marriage laws. The states never took away any preexisting recognition of nontraditional marriages; pretending that marriage laws during the days of the Founding Fathers, consistent with traditional English law, were "discriminatory" is bizarre revisionist history. Traditional marriage has been recognized as an exclusively heterosexual construct from the earliest days of English law. Gays have had their own culture and traditions; whereas one can argue that tolerance of openly gay individuals and their relationships has been dubious under many forms of government, traditional marriage laws did not prohibit or otherwise restrict other relationships; marriage and family are evolved social constructs which facilitate the stability and preservation of society. One might argue that the State has a vested interest in reinforcing, not transforming these integral constructs.
In the US, gays have had the rights of voluntary association and contracts. There's a world of difference between negative rights, e.g., protections against the State or others interfering in the natural right of gay association, and positive rights, i.e., the State must confer special benefits or recognition, various goodies, etc., on gay relationships. I don't agree in principle with subsidizing relationships via redistributive pillage. That's why most of us pro-liberty conservatives would rather see privatization of marriage.
Now to be honest, as a Catholic Christian, I have never recognized that marriage gets its legitimacy from the State; it's a social, private-sector institution, and for Catholics, it's a sacrament. I don't think this morphed legal construct of civil "marriage", where you can mix or match genders, holds any legitimacy beyond authoritarian special interest fiat. I personally would oppose related legislation, regulations or judicial decisions because I think there will be difficult to anticipate unintended consequences or spillover effects with the State intervening or meddling with the bedrock social constructs of marriage and family.
I take religious liberty and conscientious objections very seriously. So why don't I buy Kim Davis' arguments? I don't really see the State interfering with the religious institution of marriage itself; civil or State marriage is more of a legal contract. I think also it's in the nature of one's official duties; for example, a justice of the peace might officiate over civil weddings; that's qualitatively different than processing marriage licenses or paperwork, which Davis was doing. (I agree with Columbia Law School professor Katherine Davis said "Kim Davis has all sorts of religious liberty rights secured under the First Amendment and under other laws, but they are not at stake in this case. All she's asked to do with couples that come before her is certify that they've met the state requirements for marriage, so her religious opposition to same-sex marriage is absolutely irrelevant.")The proper response, if she had an objection to perform her official duties, is for her to resign from office if she has an issue with the legal fiction of "gay" marriage. She is not a judge or legislator; she is not involved with the State-enabled "marriage" ceremony itself; her responsibility is to process paperwork based on legal criteria. She must respect the rule of law, not impose her values on other people distinct from the law.
Now I understand that Pope Francis wanted to underscore the unconscionable attempt by the State to meddle with religious liberty, notoriously by forcing the Church, more specifically its religious affiliates, like hospitals and other social missions, to provide mandatory "free" birth control coverage to affiliate employees in health care coverage. The Obama Administration has an "accommodation" that the coverage must be offered, but the affiliates don't specifically have to pay for it (it isn't clear how coverage is covered by insurers--it could be swept up in premium hikes). The Little Sisters of the Poor, who minister to the elderly, have objected to the mandate/accommodation as a matter of conscience: first, religious sisters/nuns take vows of chastity; second, Catholic moral doctrine sees the intentional use of artificial contraception as a willful frustration of the possibility of new life in the context of marriage under God. The Little Sisters have lost their appeal to the 10th circuit and are appealing to SCOTUS. The fact that the Pope met with the Little Sisters was not surprising to me, being a natural example of his concern over religious liberty.
How the Pope came to meet Kim Davis, a non-Catholic who herself has been married more than once, is somewhat of a mystery. I don't believe for a second this was an accident; many Catholics have longed to be in some audience with the Pope; I have family members who visited Rome and were in a general periodic audience (we did live in France when Dad was in the military, but we didn't go to Rome; Dad had one more tour in Europe after I started college, and my baby brother also served in Germany and Italy during his military service. I have never seen the pope. About the closest I've come to a celebrity was a 1972 Nixon campaign appearance in San Antonio--years before I was eligible to vote). I do think Davis' parents are Catholic; she mentioned her intent to give the rosaries Pope Francis gave to her to her parents. According to sources, the pope became aware of her kerfuffle before visiting the US and expressed a desire to see her. Certainly the meeting was not accidental, despite leftist dismissive nonsense:
On the trip back to Rome, Pope Francis strongly affirmed the right of government officials to resist being forced to support or facilitate same-sex "marriage," claiming such conscientious objection is a "human right."
As one might guess, the gay agenda fascists, who thought they knew and liked the "who am I to judge" Pope Francis, were caught off-guard, and there have been a number of attempts to dismiss the meeting by emphasizing its brevity, by pointing to another meeting of Francis with a former student and his gay partner, and by suggesting that Pope Francis was the victim of a manipulative rogue Papal Nuncio to the US, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, whom they want terminated. The Vatican public affairs office, caught off-guard by the vicious reaction of the normally accommodating leftstream media, did much to downplay the significance of the meeting and all but threw Kim Davis under the bus.
In fact, this charismatic populist pope is media-savvy and knows exactly what he's doing. I remember when I first heard the story, I was skeptical of the secretive nature of the brief visit: surely if he wanted to make a public statement about public officials' rights in matter of conscience, it would have more impact on opinion if done openly. Perhaps he was acting more as a pastor in nature, but given the nature of leaks, it was perhaps naive to believe the secret blockbuster visit would remain so.
I remember some of the initial reactions I heard from other libertarians and conservatives being that Pope Francis really doesn't fit into the American Democrat/Republican political paradigm. (No, I see him more as a product of his homeland's left-populist Peronist politics.) The problem I have with Pope Francis is the moral ambiguity of his "leadership". The Jesus of the Holy Scriptures is not one of finger-in-the-wind moral relativity; yes, He forgave, but He also commanded, "Go and sin no more." When his followers complained of His "hard words/teachings", He said, "Many are called; few are chosen." Jesus Himself rebuked Moses' tolerance of liberalized divorce, and this pope is deregulating annulments. I'm tired of this pope commenting on things beyond his expertise, like economics and the climate. The Church has hardly been a leader rebuking a sexually obsessed culturate, and Pope Francis had little to say about a country where 40% of the babies who are not aborted are born illegitimate. I see a Church where Mass attendance has drastically declined since Vatican II, where vocations aren't keeping up with retiring priests, etc. Pope Francis, in my view, doesn't know how to set his priorities.
