Hello. Kim Davis recently refused to give me a marriage license. My name is April Miller.
I took that call from Morehead, Kentucky, ten years ago. As the communications director for the ACLU of Kentucky at the time, I understood the significance of April’s call right away. I transferred the call to William Sharp, our legal director at the time, without making any mistakes with my fingers, and the rest is history.
Due to her religious objections to same-sex marriage, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis declared she would no longer grant marriage licenses to any couples, gay or straight, within hours of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Obergefell case, which made the right to marry a legal right. It was a privilege for the Kentucky ACLU to represent four couples in their lawsuit against Davis—two homosexual and two straight. Our reasoning was straightforward: Kim Davis’s personal religious convictions did not absolve her of her responsibility to attest to couples’ eligibility for marriage under Kentucky law.
The case received a lot of media attention. International attention was focused on our courageous clients. Residents of Rowan County, known as the Rowan County Rights Coalition, staged protests in front of the Clerk’s Office during the case’s litigation, which went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States and back down to the District Court level. They insisted that Davis perform her duties each and every day. In the months that followed, the Pope, the band Survivor, and a few governors were caught up in the conflagration.
In the end, love prevailed. We successfully obtained marriage licenses for our clients Aaron Skaggs and Barry W. Spartman, April Miller and Karen Roberts, and Jody Fernandez and Kevin Holloway. Over the course of the ACLU of Kentucky’s 70-year history of defending and strengthening civil rights and civil liberties in the commonwealth, their courage and tenacity in securing legal protection for their families and all Kentuckians are admirable.
Ten years after this triumph, politicians and anti-LGBTQ groups are leading the charge against LGBTQ people’s ability to engage in public life. The rights and lifestyles of transgender persons are the focus of numerous attacks, which range from statehouses to the White House. Just this month, the Supreme Court issued a heartbreaking and inhumane decision that permits Kentucky and half of the other states to continue to prohibit transgender minors from receiving life-saving medical care.
We must stand together against bigotry and division during this pivotal time for LGBTQ rights. In our ideal future, LGBTQ people would flourish in loving homes, powerful communities, and safe schools. In the face of an unrelenting attack on our rights, we reject the politics of cynicism that call for us to diminish our needs, suppress our voices, and just give up. We are dedicated to a society where everyone has the right to safe schools, strong communities, loving families, and self-determination over their bodies and future. We are motivated by our Rowan County clients, the Rowan County Rights Coalition, and the memory of Barry Spartman, who died in 2022.
The ACLU of Kentucky is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. ACLU-KY will hold a panel discussion and reception with our past clients in Morehead on Thursday, June 26th from 5-7 p.m. at Sawstone Brewery to commemorate the organization’s anniversary and the tenth anniversary of Miller v. Davis.Online registration is available for the event.
The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky is Amber G. Duke.