Politics
Kim Davis is No Rosa Parks, Critics Say
Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, with Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, left, at her side, speaks after being released from the Carter County Detention Center, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015, in Grayson, Ky. Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, was released Tuesday after five days behind bars. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)
(The Washington Post) – Rowan County, Ky., clerk Kim Davis may have a dream about honoring her religion by refusing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but she is no Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks, critics say.
Activists and members of the public are abuzz about recent comparisons of Davis to King, Parks and other icons of the Civil Rights Movement. Davis’ supporters say her act of defiance and willingness to go to jail compare to Parks, who refused to give up her seat at the front of a public bus in Alabama in 1955. Parks’ action set off the year-long Montgomery bus boycott and drew attention to the Civil Rights Movement and to the young King. Parks is often called “the mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”
“Kim Davis is our Rosa Parks,” wrote syndicated Christian columnist Bryan Fischer on the website of the conservative American Family Association.
“Now it must be noted that Mrs. Davis is not, like Mrs. Parks, being punished for civil disobedience, but rather for an act of brazen and bold civil obedience,” wrote Fischer, who did not respond to requests for further comment. “Kim Davis languishes in jail in our day as Rosa Parks did in hers,” he wrote before Davis was released from a jail in Grayson, Ky.
