Kim Davis is no Rosa Parks, critics say

Rowan County, Ky., clerk Kim Davis may have a dream about honoring her religion by refusing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but she is no Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks, critics say.

Activists and members of the public are abuzz about recent comparisons of Davis to King, Parks and other icons of the Civil Rights Movement. Davis' supporters say her act of defiance and willingness to go to jail compare to Parks, who refused to give up her seat at the front of a public bus in Alabama in 1955. Parks' action set off the year-long Montgomery bus boycott and drew attention to the Civil Rights Movement and to the young King. Parks is often called "the mother of the Civil Rights Movement."

"Kim Davis is our Rosa Parks," wrote syndicated Christian columnist Bryan Fischer on the website of the conservative American Family Association.

"Now it must be noted that Mrs. Davis is not, like Mrs. Parks, being punished for civil disobedience, but rather for an act of brazen and bold civil obedience," wrote Fischer, who did not respond to requests for further comment. "Kim Davis languishes in jail in our day as Rosa Parks did in hers," he wrote before Davis was released from a jail in Grayson, Ky.

Davis, a Democrat, is an Apostolic Christian who has said her faith prevents her from issuing the licenses. The case grabbed national attention in the wake of the June 21 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to issue licenses to same-sex couples. Davis has become a lightning rod for the same-sex marriage debate, her case prompting supporters to tie her defiance to follow the law to the passive resistance at the center of the Civil Rights Movement.

The response to the civil rights comparisons was swift and harsh. Civil rights leaders say Davis is more comparable to segregationists such as George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who used religion as a reason to practice discrimination.

"These are people who would have opposed in their day the Rosa Parks movement in the same way that they opposed the marriage equality movement," said Van Jones, co-founder of the Rebuild the Dream civil rights organization and former adviser to President Obama. "People forget that segregation was upheld biblically for 400 years," he said, adding that some interpret the Bible as saying God wants different races to live separately.

"It's an attempt to make something ugly be beautiful," Jones said. "It's an attempt to take an ugly stand on behalf of intolerance and to confuse people into thinking it is similar to a beautiful stand on behalf of inclusion."

Davis' lawyer, Mathew Staver, disagrees. He compared the clerk's stance to that of King after he was jailed in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 for protesting how black Americans were treated in that city.

"She's not going to resign, she can't sacrifice her conscience, so she's willing, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in the 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' to pay the consequences of that decision," Staver said in a Sept. 4 press conference in front of the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson. Davis was jailed there from Sept. 3 to Sept. 8 after continuing to defy a federal judge's order to issue licenses.

Rashad Robinson, executive director of the Color of Change online civil rights organization, said he believes the comparisons of Davis to civil rights figures are a political strategy on the part of Republicans who may see themselves as losing ground.

"These folks are … at worst … misusing history for political gain," Robinson said. "True martyrs have made our country great. They are misusing legacy to prevent loving couples from being" together.

Robinson added, "If this is the strategy that the Republican Party has to build a more diverse base, to miscast and defame Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks for their political gain, then it's both sick and sad."

Wrote retired NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in an opinion piece for Time, "Using religion to justify bigotry, exploitation of the poor, religious persecution and war is part of the American way, but it's an inglorious part that we have worked hard with noble resolve to put in our past."

Religion has long been misused to rationalize bad behavior, he writes, citing even the Bible and the story of Ham, which mentions the "inferiority" of dark-skinned people.

Star Trek actor and social media personality George Takei stepped into the fray too, writing on his Facebook page: "This woman is no hero to be celebrated. She broke her oath to uphold the Constitution and defied a court order so she could deny government services to couples who are legally entitled to be married. She is entitled to hold her religious beliefs, but not to hold those beliefs on others."

Davis has not returned to work since being released from jail. She was scheduled to return to work Monday after resting and spending time with family.

Embattled Ky. county clerk to return to work Monday

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