A Modest Proposal

A proposal from what I think is probably a young feminist: "We Need to Be Able to Call Out Kim Davis’ Bigotry without Slut-Shaming or Hillbilly-Shaming." The move to try to divorce bigotry from being a hillbilly is new to me: I haven't seen that one before. It's a healthy concept, though.

I'm not sure it's very important to "be able to criticize her bigotry," as mostly a charge of bigotry is used to raise an emotional wall with her on the other side of it. You need not examine her position more closely, because if she's a bigot she's a bad, ugly -- well, not in the physical sense -- person who's obviously nothing like us good people over here. It would be worth seeing if she can be criticized on rational grounds.

And, as it turns out, it's not even hard to do this. She's at fault for being a public official who does not obey the law. For the most part, and with some exceptions, conservatives have no problem admitting to this. Even if you admire her guts for standing up to the Supreme Court, conservatives in general know what the responsible line to take is. So if you want to criticize her on those grounds, you'd find that mostly your opponents on the larger issue (bigots, no doubt) agree with you.

So why not defend the idea that the people whose job it is to enforce the law must obey the law, or be disqualified from holding public office?

When Kim Davis, the Rowan County, KY, clerk was hauled off to jail for refusing to give marriage licenses, a White House spokesman said no official is above the law. Hillary Clinton cheered on Twitter.

Oh, right. That's why.