Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in
the case that toppled gay marriage bans nationwide, has penned an
open letter to Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis.
Davis, the elected clerk of Rowan
County, last month spent five days in jail for refusing to comply
with the Supreme Court's summer ruling striking down gay marriage
bans in all 50 states. Davis said that issuing marriage licenses to
gay and lesbian couples would violate her conscience.
In his open letter, published Wednesday
by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Obergefell pleads with
Davis to “not stand in the way of others seeking their legal right
to have their love recognized.”
'”You're imposing the same
indignities on couples in Rowan County that John and I suffered when
Ohio would not legally recognize us as a married couple,” he said
of his late husband, John Arthur. “Thankfully, the law is now
changed so that nobody should ever have to experience the injustice
that John and I endured.”
“No one is above the law, Kim, not
even you,” he wrote.
Obergefell added that it's not fair for
Davis to judge: “It's your job to simply do your job. Issuing a
marriage license at work is not a personal endorsement of my marriage
any more than recording a deed is an endorsement of home ownership.”
This week, news broke that Davis met
privately with Pope Francis during his recent visit to the United
States. While the Vatican has confirmed that the meeting took place,
officials have not said why it wasn't made public.
(Related: Kim
Davis: Pope Francis told me to “stay strong.”)