Steve King, Asshole of the Day for September 6, 2015
Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has made big news as the last holdout against issuing marriage licenses to gays. To the point that rather than comply, she chose to go to jail, where she currently sits in contempt of court.
And of course when someone uses their religion as a shield to hide their bigotry, there are politicians rushing to her defense as a way to elevate their status in the presidential campaign-- Mike Huckabee has started the #ImWithKim hashtag, and Ted Cruz has said he “unequivocally” supports her right to use her government position to oppress gays per her religion.
What none of these people will acknowledge is that they would not support some government official’s right to impose their religious rules on others if that official had a different religion.
And among all this steps Rep. Steve King, normally only known for his racist xenophobia. He tweeted this:
In 1963, we should not have honored SCOTUS decision to creat a wall of separation between prayer & school. Kim Davis for Rosa Parks Award.
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) September 5, 2015
There's really two awful things here:
- That Kim Davis is like Rosa Parks
- That people should have defied the Supreme Court when it ruled against prayer in public schools
These are both offensive. Prayer in public schools should be offensive to everyone, because if it's not your prayer, then you wouldn't want some teacher forcing your kid to say it. To imagine that school prayer is OK is to think that your religion will always be the one in charge. And to not care that others have a different religion than you.
But it's the Rosa Parks comment that really bothers me. Bigots of all sorts try to appropriate the righteousness of the Civil Rights movement to their pet causes, but there is always some disconnect which suggests that they don't get why the Civil Rights protesters are heroes.
I saw the other day that people on Twitter were making this Rosa Parks/Kim Davis comparison, but it wasn't until this weekend that I saw a public figure like Rep. Steve King making it. And it's offensive because it switches the oppressor and victim:
Rosa Parks was jailed for DEMANDING the same rights white people enjoyed. Kim Davis was jailed for DENYING gay people the rights she herself enjoys.
Kim Davis is not the Rosa Parks of gay marriage, she's the person who enforced the rule against Rosa Parks sitting in the front of that bus. But Steve King doesn't care about that-- the only oppression he can see is of people like him, not others. And for that, he is the Asshole of the Day.
It is Steve King's second time as Asshole of the Day. His first was for his racist statement about Obama not being raised American.