The cost of ending the legal battle over Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples may exceed $220,000 – and Kentucky taxpayers currently are on the hook.
The U.S. Supreme Court went out of session this morning and did so with a bang. The high court took three actions that affect church-state separation.
Here’s a rundown on what happened:
Trinity Lutheran v. Comer: Americans United has been warning for more than a year that it could erode the church-state wall. The ruling is harmful – but not as bad as it might have been.
Vice President Mike Pence will be in Colorado Springs this Friday speaking at an event to mark the 40th anniversary of Focus on the Family (FOF), the fundamentalist Christian family ministry and Religious Right group founded by Dr. James C. Dobson, a child psychologist.
It will be the “Year of the Bible” for the second year in a row in Kentucky.
Republican Gov. Matt Bevin in December signed a proclamation recognizing 2017 as the “Year of the Bible.”
“Whereas, 2017 marks the 2nd year Kentucky has led the nation in celebrating the Bible’s significant impact on Kentucky and American institutions and culture by leaders in each county taking shifts to read through the entire Bible in Kentucky’s Bible Reading Marathon beginning January 1, 2017,” the proclamation begins.
In late December, you start seeing “Top Ten” lists for the year that was. So without further ado, here are the Top Ten Church-State Stories from 2016 (in my humble opinion, at least):
A Maine pagan has won the right to wear goat horns in a state-issued identification card. This is an example of the government treating all religions equally, and that’s a good thing.
Phelan Moonsong, 56, is a Pagan minister and a devotee of Pan. He has been wearing the goat horns since 2009, when he picked them up at a gathering of Pagan men.
To Moonsong, the horns are important religious attire.
Kim Davis’ legal woes aren’t quite over yet. The office of the State Attorney General announced yesterday that the embattled Rowan County clerk may have violated the Kentucky Open Records Act when she refused to comply with a records request from a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog.
Yesterday we celebrated the one-year anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark Supreme Court decision that made marriage equality the law of the land. Today we want to remind you that there’s still much work to do.
Political news of late has been dominated by three people – Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. They’ve certainly provided good copy, but there are some other things going on politically that you might not have heard about.
Let’s consider Kentucky, for example. The commonwealth has been the site of mostly bad news lately. Ken Ham’s “Ark Park” is getting taxpayer incentives, and the state’s Republican governor, Matt Bevin, is thrilled.
Almost exactly three years ago, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins appeared on a far-right radio program and predicted that the country was on the verge of revolution.
If the Supreme Court upheld marriage equality, Perkins opined, the United States might split in two.
