As many of you know, the religious right is claiming that Kim Davis is this generation’s Rosa Parks. In truth, by refusing to grant any marriage licenses at all in protest of the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of marriage equality, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk is more like George Wallace, Orval Faubus, and Bull Connor. But most of you don’t know that the religious right is making a comparison about Davis that is at least as, if not more, offensive. They’re now likening a woman who was deservedly held in contempt for her bigotry to a woman who was not only actually persecuted for her beliefs, but threatened with execution.
Saturday, I told you that at this weekend’s Values Voter Summit, the Family Research Council gave Davis its “Cost of Discipleship Award” in recognition of her two-month farce. However, I noticed that when the FRC announced Davis would get the award, FRC president Tony Perkins noted that the award’s first recipient was Mariam Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman who was persecuted and threatened with death unless she converted from Christianity to Islam. I was dumbfounded. How in the world could Perkins even think Davis was in any way comparable to Ibrahim?
For those who don’t remember, Ibrahim was born to an Ethiopian Orthodox mother and a Muslim father. The father left the family early on, and Ibrahim was raised as a Christian. She eventually married Daniel Wani, a Sudanese-born Christian who has American citizenship. Out of nowhere, her half-brother reported her to the police for adultery. Under Sudan’s strict interpretation of sharia law, anyone who has a Muslim father is automatically a Muslim. Prosecutors argued that a Muslim can’t legally marry a Christian, and therefore Ibrahim was guilty of adultery.
The court agreed, and demanded that Ibrahim convert to Islam. Otherwise, she would be flogged 100 times as an adulteress and executed as an apostate from Islam. She spent several months in a Sudanese prison under appalling conditions. When her husband was finally allowed to see her, he discovered her legs were swollen. She was also denied access to medical care even though she was eight months pregnant at the time of her arrest. She was forced to give birth to a baby girl with her legs shackled to the floor. As a result, the girl may never be able to walk normally.
Ibrahim was initially freed on appeal. However, while they were on their way to the airport, they were detained by police and her lawyers were beaten. They took refuge in the American embassy in Khartoum, but were finally allowed to leave after extensive negotiations between Washington and Khartoum, with Italy acting as a go-between. They are now living in New Hampshire with Wani’s family.
Contrast this with Davis’ story. As federal judge David Bunning noted in ordering her to end her shenanigans, Davis has not at any point been ordered to stop going to church. There is no evidence that she was subjected to inhumane conditions while spending a weekend in a county jail after Bunning held her in contempt. Her lawyers with Liberty Counsel have not been threatened at any point during the proceedings. Last and certainly not least, Davis herself has engaged in acts of persecution by not only turning away same-sex couples, but refusing to grant licenses to straight couples as well.
I’m used to seeing lack of proportion from Christianists. Many of you know that I was briefly tricked into joining a cultish campus ministry in my freshman year at Carolina. During my sophomore year, I briefly pretended to have “seen the light” and was just as rabid as they were. One of them noted how I’d spoken out so loudly against them, and likened me to the Apostle Paul. So, speaking out against a group is the same as actually sending people to death? Almost two decades later, I still can’t get my head around that.
That doesn’t make the FRC’s attempt to compare Davis to Ibrahim any less outrageous. I recently began dating a woman who, like me, is a radical-lefty tongue-talker. When I told her about this award, she told me that “no logical mind on Earth” could see any parallel between a woman who endured what Ibrahim had to endure and a woman who was rightly held to account for willfully using the power of government to put innocent people in harm’s way. If I were Ibrahim, Wani, or anyone else in their family and I knew how Perkins was using their ordeal, I’d have every right to be angry.
