Looks like Kim Davis won’t be working in South Africa.
Although same-sex marriage has been legal in South Africa since 2006, officials have been able to reject same-sex couples applying for marriage certificates if it clashes with their conscience, religion or beliefs.
The National Assembly of South Africa voted in favour of a bill which seeks to ban this, which was introduced by Deidre Carter back in January. Speaking about the bill, she highlighted the suffering of the LGBTQ community during the apartheid years, saying that they “were branded as criminals and rejected by society as outcasts.”
On her bill she said: “I received complaints that couples were being turned away from a number of Home Affairs offices as there were no marriage officers that were prepared to solemnise same-sex marriages.
“My investigations revealed that this tendency was in fact more widespread than initially thought. At the time, the Minister advised me that nearly half of its designated marriage officers had been exempted from solemnizing same-sex marriages.”
Carter argued that the rejection was a “limitation [that] cannot be justified in an open and democratic society.”
Following the passing of this bill, it will now head to South Africa’s National Council of Provinces to be voted on. If it succeeds there, then it will need President Cyril Ramaphosa to sign it into law.
If the bill passes into law, then South African same-sex couples will be spared another example of Kim Davis, a Kentucky clerk who was sent to jail for contempt of court after she refused to issue same-sex couples because of her religious beliefs.
On American Family Radio, she later said that it was a “joy” to fight against same-sex marriages, saying: “I consider it a joy to be chosen, to make a stand, and to defend my God’s word, the infallible word of God.”
Earlier this year, she released her memoirs, which details her encounters with “fist-pounding homosexual men.”
Under God’s Authority: The Kim Davis Story was co-authored with John Aman and Mat Staver, two members of the anti-LGBTQ organisation Liberty Counsel which represented her for free during her court battles.
“Kim chronicles her dramatic encounters with furious, fist-pounding, homosexual men and the hate mail that flooded her office,” reads a blurb of the book on the Liberty Counsel website.
“Discover what God did when one woman refused to compromise her faith and what He will do when you are called to do the same.”
And during elections this year, she was voted out of her position as Kentucky’s county clerk. Sadly, she was not succeeded by David Ermold, one of the men that she denied a marriage certificate to, instead losing out to Elwood Caudill Jr.
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