Kim Davis' Stand for Biblical Marriage Honored With 'Cost of Discipleship' Award
The Family Research Council has awarded Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who was recently jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, with the "Cost of Discipleship Award" for 2015.
"I feel so very undeserving," Davis said at the award ceremony held at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., her eyes wet with tears her voice trembling, according to The Hill.
"I want to start by thanking my Lord and my Savior Jesus Christ, because without Him it would never be possible, for He is my strength that carries me," added the 50-year-old Rowan County clerk who was elected as a Democrat.
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The award was announced by FRC President Tony Perkins Friday.
After the Supreme Court decision in June legalizing gay marriage across the country, Davis began refusing to issue licenses. A judge ordered her to issue marriage licenses, but she cited "God's authority" as the reason to defy the Supreme Court ruling. The judge then ordered her arrest, and warned that any other clerk who refuses to issue licenses could also be found in contempt of court.
"God's moral law conflicts with my job duties," Davis told the judge before her arrest. "You can't be separated from something that's in your heart and your soul."
At the award ceremony, Perkins compared the Christian clerk to figures like Abraham Lincoln and Rosa Parks, who were all "men and women of integrity few in number but deep in character."
"Whether it was Abraham Lincoln asserting the constitutionally unsettled nature of the Dred Scott decision; Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of a public bus, or Martin Luther King risking the … call of police dogs to end legal segregation," Perkins was quoted as saying, "our nation has been ennobled and enriched by historic citizens who declare their unwillingness to accept rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of nature and with nature's God."
Davis said Friday that she and her family have switched to the Republican Party because the Democrats no longer represented them, according to Reuters.
"My husband and I had talked about it for quite a while and we came to the conclusion that the Democratic Party left us a long time ago, so why were we hanging on?" she was quoted as saying.
She also said there was likely no legal problem with marriage licenses being issued in her absence. "I don't think there should be much of an issue and the judge didn't have any problem accepting the licenses that were issued when I was incarcerated, which had been altered, so I don't see that there should be an issue," she said.
