Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of the Supreme Court, is a bigot, renowned civil-rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz tells
Newsmax TV.
"This is not about religion. If it were about a religion, then the clerks would refuse to marry people who had once been divorced. Jesus was very clear about that one," the Harvard Law professor emeritus said Friday to J.D. Hayworth on "Newsmax Prime."
Story continues below video.
Note: Watch Newsmax TV on
DirecTV Ch. 349,
DISH Ch. 223 and
Verizon FiOS Ch. 115. Get Newsmax TV on your cable system —
Click Here Now
"This is all about bigotry. Anybody who wouldn't marry a gay couple but would marry somebody who's been divorced is not exercising [their] religious right. They're showing bigotry against gays and the law doesn't have to tolerate that.
"She doesn't have to marry gays but she doesn't have to have a job marrying people. If she wants that job, she has to follow the law."
Davis, who has been married four times and has two children out-of wedlock, says she's an Apostolic Christian simply exercising her religious rights in her belief that "marriage is a union between one man and one woman."
But U.S. District Judge David Bunning held her in contempt for ignoring the Supreme Court ruling and said she will remain behind bars until she begins issuing marriage licenses or allows her deputies to.
Dershowitz said Davis may be in store for a long jail stint.
"If that's her religious belief, then she ought to stay in prison. That's what Martin Luther King did, that's what many other people did," he said.
"But I don't believe this is about religion. It's about bigotry, because if it were about religion, she would refuse to marry people who had been divorced."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.