So the clerks wanted to comply with the law but their boss wouldn't let them? (Remember, one of them was her son.) That's not imaginary oppression, that's actual oppression! Via Think Progress:
In an interview with the Kentucky Trial Court Review, Rowan County Attorney Cecil Watkins expressed exasperation with Kim Davis, the anti-gay clerk who has refused to issue marriage licenses due to her objections to marriage equality. Davis, Watkins said, “does not represent” the county or its values, and he added that he told Davis that he “will not and cannot support” her in her refusal to obey the Constitution.
Perhaps most significantly, Watkins also says that he learned that Davis’s deputy clerks would issue marriage licenses to all couples legally entitled to one, but that they are too afraid of Davis to do so.
If Judge David Bunning, the federal judge who is expected to hold Davis in contempt after a hearing Thursday morning, orders Davis’s deputies to issue marriage licenses, Watkins says, the deputies will comply.
Davis’s refusal to comply with the Constitution has potentially placed her deputies in legal jeopardy. In an order announcing the contempt hearing, Judge Bunning said that Davis “and each of her deputy clerks shall be present at the hearing.” The deputies’ willingness to issue licenses if Davis is no longer an obstacle, however, may save them from sanctions since the primary purpose of the contempt hearing is to pressure Davis’s office to comply with the law.
