The saga of Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis has captured the national spotlight. Her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples caused a federal judge to send her to jail for contempt. Her story has prompted strong reactions.

Newspaper editorial boards and columnists in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and North and South Dakota, are nearly unanimous in agreement that Kim Davis should have issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples or resigned and gone into a different line of work.

The editorial board of the Mankato Free Press rejected Davis’ claims of religious freedom and praised Minnesota’s system which relies on appointed rather than elected clerks:

Kim Davis, the Rowan County clerk who emerged Tuesday from five days in a county lockup for defying a federal court order, overstepped her role in refusing on religious grounds to issue marriage licenses to couples who are legally entitled to them. She has her religious beliefs, but marriage licenses are a civil matter. Even Rowan County is not a theocracy.

We are confident that a Minnesota clerk who imposed her faith on others would be removed from her position. Having such positions be appointive rather than elective increases accountability rather than subtracting from it. The Kentucky standoff illustrates the wisdom of limiting local elections to the positions that truly deserve the public’s input.

The editorial board of the Fargo Forum issued a warning to North Dakota clerks that refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples is a slippery slope:

County officials in North Dakota should be paying close attention to the goings on in Kentucky regarding a county clerk’s refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. A Kentucky federal judge found Kim Davis in contempt and jailed her after she refused to issue licenses, and even had ordered her deputies to refuse licenses to gay couples. Deputies have since said they will obey the law, but Davis has been adamant her religious convictions take precedence over her responsibilities as a public county clerk.
Davis is wrong. The federal judge, adhering to the law of the land as determined in June by the U.S. Supreme Court, is right. County clerks take oaths of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution and their state constitutions. There is no wiggle room in those oaths for the imposition of personal religious beliefs in executing their secular duties, nor should there be. If Davis, or any county clerk anywhere (including county recorders in North Dakota), refuse to do their jobs because of strongly held religious beliefs, they have two options: resign or assign gay marriage license duties to deputies.
At least three North Dakota counties have gone with the latter option. Recorders got approval from county commissions to shift gay marriage license duties to clerks. Thus far there have been no problems. Nonetheless, the underlying principle cannot be dismissed. If a public official can get away with enforcing some laws and kissing off others, the slope gets slippery quickly. Shifting a function of an office to a deputy clerk because of the clerk’s religious sentiments is a step onto that slope.

In “For whiny religious right, show is on the other foot,” Forum columnist Jane Ahlin excoriates Davis and the religious right for being whiny:

The saga of Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, shines the spotlight on an increasingly different attitude of the political Christian right. Long dismissive of whiny, victim-obsessed secular liberals, right-wing Christians appear to believe they’ll prosper as whiny, victim-obsessed religious conservatives. Not that they see themselves as whiny, of course. Heavens no, they simply are standing up for their God-given rights – rights they had until other people were granted “special rights.”

In “Kim Davis is no martyr, her religion no more special than anyone else’s,” Winona Daily News columnist Jerome Christenson says that Davis is no martyr:

So the judge let Kim Davis out of jail.
Fine. No point in making a hero and martyr out of a government bureaucrat who refuses to do her job.
Amazing how quickly the Fox Newsies and other right-thinking folks climbed on the bandwagon to cheer the Rowan County, Kent., clerk who refused to respect her constituents’ constitutional right to marry whomever they pleased based on the dubious legal and theological claim that Jesus told her not to do it.
I just can’t help wondering if the same folks would be calling for federal judge David Bunning to spend eternity dog-paddling in the lake of fire if he had imposed the same ruling on a devout Quaker who refused to issue handgun permits based on her belief that pistols are designed solely to kill and her complicity in their use would put her on the wrong side of at least one commandment and a raft of biblical injunctions.

The Pioneer Press’ Ruben Rosario channeled his alter ego Frank Slade:

S: Mr. Slade, what do you think of the Kim Davis mess? Shouldn’t this woman be applauded for not compromising her religious beliefs?
FS: First off, kid, I’m Lt. Col, ret. You will address me as such. Now give me 20! Just kidding. She’s entitled to express and exercise and live out her religious convictions. But the holier-than-thou martyr-like act rang hollow with me when I found out she’s been divorced three times and on her fourth marriage. Even Larry King and Newt Gingrich did a double take. Hooah! Pretty hypocritical. Compare that with the story in the local paper this week about a same-sex couple together 55 years who died within weeks of each other. Hey, I’m straight. Women. The smell of them. Don’t get me started. But that same-sex partnership screams to me “til death do us part” and more conviction than this Davis lady. Some of these folks who claim to do God’s bidding pick and choose which religious convictions to espouse when it is convenient for them or they want to make a name for themselves. Hey, she’s an elected official who took an oath as a county clerk to follow the law and perform her government job. If she can’t do it, she should lickety-split.
S: What does that mean … er, Lt. Col?
FS: Take a hike. Resign. Get another job. Next?

The Iowa State Daily’s Michael Heckle notes the true reason Davis went to jail:

What the supporters don’t seem to realize is that Davis is not sitting in jail because of her religious beliefs. She is being held in contempt of court after refusing to do her job and breaking the law.
Even right-wing heart throb Donald Trump readily admitted that same-sex marriage is the “law of the land.” Yet his opponents in the Republican Party seem to struggle with the idea of legal consequences when it comes to using a public office to support bigoted, theocratic beliefs. Huckabee even made plans to visit Davis in jail prior to her release.
This is a truly disturbing thought. Huckabee is now supporting someone who, after being ordered multiple times by federal court, refused to obey the law and used a public office to discriminate against homosexual couples.

The editorial board of the Des Moines Register took Republican presidential candidates to task for backing Davis:

Right on cue, several candidates for the Republican nomination for president took up the banner on Davis’ behalf, comparing her to Rosa Parks, who went to jail for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus. And, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz visited Davis in jail before she was released Tuesday.
So, let’s be clear about what’s going on here.
To begin, Davis is not Rosa Parks.
Parks was arrested for protesting a Montgomery, Alabama, law that discriminated against African-Americans on public transportation.
Davis went to jail because she refused to enforce a law that law 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

Vikki Reich, writing in the Our Voices section of the Star Tribune, decries the religious right funding that props up anti-LGBT actions:

And now, we have Kim Davis, the publicly elected official in Kentucky who went to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to LGBT couples because of her religious beliefs. How much money will conservative Christians raise for her defense? How much money will they give to her beyond that? My guess is that it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars this time around, too.
The fact is that it pays to be a martyr these days, at least for white conservative Christians.
As a lesbian, I come to this with an obvious bias. But that doesn’t mean I take these incidents personally. In fact, I don’t take them personally at all. I know there is always backlash after progress. I can see how far we’ve come in terms of LGBT rights just in my lifetime. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the Moral Universe Is long, but it bends toward Justice.”
The truth is that discrimination in Indiana and Oregon and Kentucky won’t impact my daily life in Minnesota. I will continue to live as I always have, loving my partner and raising a family. The real danger lies in the public response to these cases, in turning people who discriminate against others into heroes by giving them a platform, money and their 15 minutes of fame.

Star Tribune cartoonist Steve Sack offered this after religious right leaders compared Davis to civil rights icon Rosa Parks:

Editorial #cartoon of the day: #KimDavis #RosaParks #StopTheComparisons By Steve Sack: http://t.co/CcXQYnmQzi pic.twitter.com/PSsGbzFPvG

— SoCalOpinion (@SoCalOpinion) September 11, 2015