Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis, who refused to issue gay marriage licenses and was taken into federal custody for contempt of court, has posted bond and been released after having a change of heart in jail.
After experiencing what she called a quasi-religious experience with her female cell mate, Davis returned to her job, her cheeks flushed and a smile spread across her formerly dumpy disposition.
“God sent me a message while I was incarcerated,” she told a crowd outside the courthouse before heading back to work.
“God was cleverly disguised as a big black woman named Shaniqua with very soft hands, but His message was loud and clear: We are here to love one another, not to deny each other basic rights and services.”
Shaniqua Jackson, a former hairdresser from Ashland and Davis’s cell mate for the night, is serving a four year sentence for prostitution and marijuana possession.
Davis had been taken into custody Thursday morning for refusing to issue marriage certificates on the grounds that same sex marriages violated her religious faith. “My conscious won’t allow me,” she explained to the judge at the time.
While many pointed out the obvious hypocrisy of having been married four times, divorced thrice, with a lot of infidelity in between, Davis held firm to her principles and considered jail a lot cooler than the fiery hell of eternal damnation. After her arrest, religious leaders across the nation expressed outrage over what they deemed the persecution of Christianity.
Republican Presidential candidate and former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, trying to steal the spotlight away from the surging Donald Trump, took to Twitter to say, “Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubt about the criminalization of Christianity in this country. We must defend religious liberty.”
But all that talk came to a screeching halt Friday morning after Davis’s about face on the issue, causing some to speculate that she was bribed and possibly tortured while under federal custody. When asked by the press if bribery or torture played a part in her change in religious conviction, she only smiled shyly and said that Shaniqua showed her the error of her ways.
“I owe my revelation first and foremost to God, who sent me an angel. She spread her wings all up and over me and protected me from the winds of bigotry,” she said quivering from head to toe. “Praise God!” She then quickly trotted into her job at the clerk’s office and signed the first same sex marriage license she could get her hands on.
“I think it’s terrific,” said Scott Holland, one of the future grooms of Davis’s first official granted same sex license to marry. “In fact, we’re thinking of having our ceremony at the jail so Shaniqua can attend.”
When asked what effect her latest experience would have on her fourth and current marriage, Ms. Davis said, “I can’t imagine ever leaving my husband, at least not for another four years or so.”
Mike Huckabee and all the religious leaders we attempted to interview for a follow up to this article were unavailable to comment.