Kentucky clerk Kim Davis claimed last
week that her legal fight to keep her county from issuing marriage
licenses to gay couples was not “a gay or lesbian issue.”
Davis is the elected clerk of Rowan
County who last year defied a federal judge's ruling ordering her
office to issue marriage licenses to all qualified couples. Davis
refused, claiming that to issue such licenses to gay and lesbian
couples would violate her conscience. Her unsuccessful attempt to
keep her office from issuing such licenses turned her into a
Christian celebrity.
She received a ticket for President
Barack Obama's final State of the Union address through the office of
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican strongly opposed to LGBT rights.
In an interview with Catholic news
network EWTN's Jason Calvi, Davis praised the president for remarks
he made “about how to stand strong, help those that are less
fortunate.”
“And I think that is the basis of the
Christian faith is the brotherly love, you know?” she said.
The president also included a reference
to the Supreme Court's marriage equality ruling in his speech.
(Related: Obama:
Spirit of America is how we secured marriage equality.)
“He had made the statement that
everybody was free to marry who they love, and, of course, that's the
stand that I stood against,” Davis
said. “And it's not, for me, it never was a gay or a lesbian
issue. It's about standing up for the word of the God and as God had
defined marriage from the very beginning as between one man and one
woman, and that's what I stood for.”
Davis added that Obama's agenda was
“mashing down” Christians.
“One of the things that he focused on
was that we should not discriminate against Muslims or persecute
them. But he never once said anything about the people of the
Christian faith, who are being so tried and tested and being mashed
down, literally, with his agenda,” she said.
(Related: At
Kim Davis attended event, Tony Perkins claims gay marriage has led to
“blood on our streets.”)