Kim Davis' loathsome lawyer and the law firm known for defending Christian bigots, the Liberty Counsel, is phenomenally adept at playing the victim. The idea of religious persecution of Christians in this country is really a stretch, yet the Religious Right continues to play this hand at every opportunity when it comes to LGBT issues.
The infamous Kentucky clerk's lawyer, Mat Staver, who has previously compared Davis to civil rights figures like Rosa Parks and MLK, believes that gays are levying a jizya tax on Christian believers. That's because those gays are always up to something and the GOP's Lawyers-for-Jesus are on the offensive in their fight to permit religious bigotry by playing defense.
Staver attempts to equate this jizya tax with the fines levied on businesses who refuse to serve members of the gay community, like the Oregon bakery. Whereas, a jizya tax is levied on anyone in a Muslim theocracy who is not a practicing Muslim, this is a violation of commerce in a secular nation. Alan Colmes deftly points this out to Staver by reminding him that America is not a religious theocracy, no matter how much people like Kim Davis (along with Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and so on ad infinitum on the Right) would desire a Christian U.S. Theocracy.
STAVER: We shouldn't be fined, whether we're living in a country that imposes a jizya tax or certainly in America for exercising our faith that conflicts with someone else.
COLMES: But unlike Muslim countries that are non-secular, we're a secular country and these are places as you well know, of public accommodation, that must be open to all commerce, so it's not the same thing as a Muslim country saying 'well, you're not a Muslim,' not that I'm defending that rule. But It's very different in a secular country where you have to be open if you're a place that serves the public.
Staver attempted to shroud his client in the protections of the First Amendment by claiming the government is trampling on her religious liberty, which worked such wonders for Indiana's Governor Pence. Like his right wing cohorts, he neglects to mention those very same rights for certain people are being eviscerated by self-righteous media whores like Davis.
COLMES: What about the right of gays to marry, for example, where your client, Kim Davis, her religious views apparently coincided with or conflicted with gays' rights as Constitutionally mandated by the Supreme Court to have marriage? So who wins in that back and forth? How do you accommodate both sides?
The lawyer credits Teabag Governor, Matt Bevin with the expeditious solution of simply removing the clerk's name from marriage licenses. Now he's lent credence to her way-too-publicized 'civil disobedience.' Sanctioned bigotry via religion, what could possibly go wrong?
STAVER: She didn't want to authorize something that conflicted with (her) God's definition of marriage.
Denying equal rights to certain citizens should hardly be considered civil disobedience. In September of last year, he compared Davis to Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln tirelessly worked towards, and eventually died for the right to extend basic human rights and dignity to Americans. Religious bigot, Kim Davis went to jail for six days, because she wanted to deny basic rights and dignity to certain people in this country.
Even worse, Staver has compared this imagined religious persecution to the plight of Jews who suffered and perished in the Holocaust.
"...what happened in Nazi Germany, what happened there first, they removed the Jews from government public employment, then they stopped patronizing them in their private businesses, then they continued to stigmatize them, then they were the ‘problems,’ then they killed them,” Staver said. “The fact of the matter is, she has a right to this employment and you don’t lose your constitutional liberties just because you are employed by the government.”
Thankfully, Alan didn't let Staver off the hook and he revisited this dramatic comparison.
COLMES: But you have compared her both to Martin Luther King Jr. and Jews in the Holocaust, is a Jew comparison to the Holocaust a little over the top?
STAVER: I'm not sure I've compared this to Jews in the Holocaust (even though he did), but I think what we looked at with Martin Luther King Jr. and certainly not in comparison with what he did, it's just not in the same category, and it's not meant to be. But obviously looking at analogies where someone had a belief that conflicted with the laws of the land, and in Martin Luther King Jr.'s situation he chose to go to jail rather than violate his conscience. Kim Davis chose to also go to jail while her conscience remained *crosstalk\ (inaudible)
Alan read him his exact words from September, prompting Staver to double down on his slippery-slope-to-genocide argument.
With regards to Davis' private meeting with the Pope, Mat Staver believed that Pope Francis agreed with her right to civil disobedience, while Colmes reminds him that the Vatican issued a statement that said "they were in no way endorsing what she was doing."
Staver blames the confusion on the careful wording of the Vatican statement that secretly approves of the actions of Kim Davis by sanctioning the universal human right of conscience protection. Alan punched back by reminding Staver how well lawyers seem to do the same thing: 'carefully craft' statements and proclamations to fit whatever narrative they choose. As a well-known lawyer for the fictitiously persecuted, he should be able to spot carefully crafted statements when he sees them.
