Republican presidential candidate Mike
Huckabee said Friday that he is planning to visit jailed Kentucky
clerk Kim Davis on Tuesday.
According to CNN, Huckabee will visit
Davis, the elected clerk of Rowan County, in jail. Following the
visit, Huckabee will lead a rally in support of Davis outside the
detention center where she is being held.
A federal judge on Thursday found Davis
in contempt for refusing to comply with his ruling ordering her to
issue marriage licenses to all qualified couples. Rather than issue
marriage licenses to gay couples after the Supreme Court struck down
gay marriage bans in all 50 states, Davis stopped issuing marriage
licenses to all couples. Four couples, two of whom are gay, filed a
federal lawsuit. The Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene
in the case.
Deputy clerks issued
marriage licenses to six gay couples on Friday.
During an appearance on CNN's The
Lead, Huckabee reiterated his support for Davis and called her
case an example of the “criminalization of Christianity in our
country.”
“What we end up having is the first
example of the criminalizaiton of Christianity for believing in the
traditional definition of marriage,” he said.
Huckabee told host Jake Tapper that
Davis could ignore the Supreme Court's ruling because courts cannot
make laws.
When Tapper asked whether Huckabee
would support a clerk refusing to issue a marriage license to an
interracial couple based on his or her religious beliefs after the
Supreme Court struck down state bans, Huckabee said that the issues
were different.
“It's not the same case,” Huckabee
answered. “That was an interpretation of marriage but it's
still man, woman marriage. This is a completely new, total
redefinition of marriage. And I think what's important is that we
have a county clerk who was not accommodated for her faith but was
jailed without bail.”