Republicans are fast to call Kim Davis a modern equivalent to Rosa Parks. They couldn’t be more wrong. Kim Davis has little in common with Parks except that they both were arrested. Outside of that factor, they were acting for very different reasons.
As Politico points out:
[C]ontrary to her own, self-aggrandizing description, she’s no Rosa Parks. In fact, she’s the opposite: While Parks was a private citizen defying what she knew to be the law, Davis is a public official, who is charged with not following the law. She’s Rosa Parks’ bus driver, denying a service to the public.
It’s an important difference and it’s one that Davis and other Republicans refuse to recognize. Instead they lift Davis up to some sacrosanct level where she can do no wrong.
Another difference comes from the options that Davis had that she failed to exercise.
As the Des Moines Register argues:
Davis went to jail because she refused to enforce a law that law [sic] violates her religious belief that same-sex marriage is sinful. Davis was ordered to perform her job as county clerk by issuing marriage licenses to qualified applicants. Among those qualified, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, are same-sex couples.
Davis’ choice was to perform her job or resign. Instead she chose to stop issuing all marriage licenses, thus denying the rights of all marriageable couples in Rowan County. That was not civil disobedience, it was a violation of the oath she swore as a public official to uphold the Constitution.
After spending any amount of time actually paying attention to the details of what happened to Rosa Parks and what happened to Kim Davis, it becomes apparent that the two are by no means equivalent, and it’s repulsive for anyone to contend otherwise.
Watch David Pakman’s take on this topic:
