All I can say is it's about time someone finally gave this hypocritical wingnut grifter the treatment she deserves on national television. I can't tell you how many shows I sat through or heard a portion of before The Last Word aired on MSNBC this Tuesday evening, where they "reported" on this clerk from Kentucky, who is still refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and somehow couldn't bother to mention the fact that the woman is on her fourth husband.

Dan Savage was asked to weigh in on this disgusting debacle and not only did he lay into Kim Davis for her hypocrisy with being married four times while pretending to want to follow the teachings of Jesus in the Bible, he also hit her hard for the fact that all she is doing is gearing up to be the latest recipient of the right wing's wingnut welfare program, where they always make sure that one of their own is taken care of (a problem that we do not have, sadly on the left).

SAVAGE: And I think Kim Davis is waiting to cash in. I predicted from the beginning that she would defy all the court orders, defy the Supreme Court, that she would ultimately be held in contempt of court, lose her job, perhaps go to prison for a short amount of time. And then she will have written for her, ghost written books. She will go on the right wing lecture circuit and she'll never have to do an honest day's work ever again in her life.

This is about someone hypocritically cashing in and she is a hypocrite. She said today, and I'm going to read it because I want to get it right:

I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage.

This is a woman who's been divorced three times and married four times, and I'm going to read this too:

She gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband. They were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second husband.

She's now onto her fourth husband. Jesus Christ himself in scripture condemned divorce, called it adultery and forbids is. Jesus Christ himself in scripture says not one word about same-sex marriage.

Amen to that. Savage wrote a column addressing the same issues as he did on the show, and please go read all of it, but here's a portion: And Now I Have to Say Something About Kim Davis:

Davis and her supporters would like to see the "rule of law" replaced with "the rule of your imaginary friends." The trouble with that, of course, is that people have very different ideas about who their imaginary friends are and what their imaginary friends think is icky. (Their imaginary friends, in fact, might not think much of your imaginary friends.) So empowering people—particularly public servants—to violate the rights of their fellow citizens based on the opinions of their various imaginary friends is an invitation to civic chaos.

I would say I can't wait for a Muslim county clerk in, say, Dearborn, Michigan (which has a huge Muslim community), to refuse to issue a marriage license to a Christian couple on the grounds that the this kafir couple hasn't been paying jizya... but that's not going to happen. Religious minorities in this country intuitively understand that to empower religious bigots like Davis is to paint bullseyes on their own backs. So the Jesus-freak goons at the Liberty Counsel know they can continue to frame discrimination as a "religious freedom" because they're confident that American Christians will be the ones doing the discriminating, not suffering from it.

Anyway, I haven't written much about Kim Davis because I knew how this was going to play out after Davis first made the news: Davis would continue to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, she would disobey multiple court orders, she would take it all the way to the Supreme Court, she would disobey the Supreme Court's order, she would be charged with contempt (her contempt hearing is scheduled for Thursday), she would possibly wind up in prison and definitely wind up losing her job. Then she would "write" a book about her traumatic experiences—a book is doubtless already being ghostwritten for her—and finally spend the rest of her life on the rightwing speaking circuit playing the persecuted Christian martyr lady. I saw it coming and I didn't want to help build Davis up—I didn't want to help cash in—but my efforts to ignore her didn't in the end slow her rise to fame. The events this morning in Rowan County have led the news summary on NPR all day and are currently the top story on the homepage of New York Times.

But no one is stating the obvious: this isn't about Kim Davis standing up for her supposed principles—proof in a moment—it's about Kim Davis cashing in. There's a big pile of sweet, sweet bigot money out there waiting for her. If the owners of a pizza parlor could raise a million dollars just by threatening not to cater the gay wedding no one asked them to cater... just imagine how much of that sweet, sweet bigot money Kim Davis is going to rake in. I'm sure Kim Davis is already imagining it. [...]

The opinions of Kim Davis's imaginary friends matter very much when you want to get married... but not so much when Kim Davis wants to get married and divorced and married again and divorced again and married for a third time and divorced for a third time and married for a fourth time. (Mozel tov to you, Kim, and here's hoping the fourth time in the charm.) Davis's hypocrisy stinks to high holy heaven, as my mother might've said, but Davis has an answer for that: She started going back to church to honor the dying wish of her "godly mother-in-law" (her statement doesn't indicate which of her four MILs was the godly one) and that's when Jesus entered her heart and His magical mystery blood cleansed Davis of her sins—and how dare you bring up Davis's own marital history when she's just trying to do the Lord's work down there in Kentucky interfering with the rights of other couples to create their own marital histories. (And speaking of marital histories: Has anyone gone down to the courthouse to look up Kim Davis's own divorce records? Because in all fairness... if Davis was divorced for "sexual immorality" then all three of her divorces could've been "biblical," I suppose.)

It's a pretty neat trick: If I bring up Kim Davis's four marriages, I'm being rude and mean-spirited and her first three marriages are in the past and she's saved now and fuck you, gaywad. (That's the reaction you get on Twitter when you mention Davis's three divorces and four marriages.) But it's not rude and mean-spirited for Kim Davis to tell same-sex couples that they're sick and sinful and going to hell (opinions she's free to hold) and to further prevent these couples from freely exercising their civil and secular right to wed (something Davis, as a public servant, is not free to do)—and somehow it's not dangerous for the goons at Liberty Counsel cram this new and potentially destabilizing definition of "religious freedom" down all of our throats. (A pluralistic, multi-cultural, multi-denominational, multi-faith society where "them's my religious beliefs!" is legitimate grounds for Americans discriminate against each other? That sounds like fun.)

Lordy, lordy.

I say this with sadness, I say this as the son of a preacher, I say this as a former seminarian: This pathetic bullshit is what passes for Christianity in America today. Thanks to the efforts of hate groups like the American Family Association, the Family Research Council (co-founded by a tortured closet case and lately the employer of a kid-diddling serial adulterer), the 700 Club, the Moral Majority, the National Organization for Marriage, the National Association of Evangelicals, etc., and the mousy, near-complicit silence of left-wing and progressive Christians, "Christian" is now synonymous with "anti-gay bigot."

To be a good American Christian like Kim Davis—or a good Alaskan Christian like Bristol Palin—you don't have to stay in your first marriage, you don't have to stop getting knocked up by randos who aren't your husband, you don't have to deny marriage licenses to straight people who are remarrying or marrying outside the faith or obtaining marriage licenses for Godless secular marriages. Nope. You just have to hate the homos. Hate the homos and you're right with the God of Tony Perkins and Josh Duggar, hate the homos and you're good with American Jesus. (Toss in support for capital gains tax cuts and Jesus loves you even more.) You don't have to feed the sick, clothe the naked, house the homeless—you don't have to do any of that shit Jesus actually talked about—you just have to hate the homos hard enough to go to jail for for your beliefs cash in on your bigotry.