In Rowan County Kentucky, a county clerk is facing stiff penalties for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her name is Kim Davis, and she’s become some kind of a hero in conservative circles.

I too am in the camp cheering her on. But perhaps not for the same reasons as other conservatives. This is not even an issue of what you believe concerning homosexuality. This is a clear-cut case where the federal government, and the Supreme Court specifically, overstepped its boundaries and imposed a dictatorial edict on all the states on an issue that was already being handled adequately by the states. The Supreme Court judgment was premature, unnecessary, self-important, and unconstitutional.

So, whatever your views on same-sex marriage or homosexuality (I think I have made mine clear), Kim Davis is supporting counties’ and states’ rights in the face of an over-reaching and tyrannical federal power. So more power to her. In one sense.

My heart sank a little bit though when I heard this:

Davis was born in Breathitt County, the heart of Appalachia, about 60 miles (97 km) south of Morehead. She has been married four times, twice to the same man, her current husband Joe Davis. Of her four children, twins were born out of wedlock in 1994.

Ugh. So of course, everyone in the homosexual camp is pointing out Davis’ own checkered past as a reason why she, along with every other conservative by the way, is a horrible selfish hypocrite.

Before you are too quick to fall into the same tu quoque arguments the homosexual lobby loves falling into, it should be admitted that homosexuals are right at least in this. They did not single-handedly cheapen or destroy marriage in this country. Heterosexuals did.

It’s true. Over the course of a few hundred years, heterosexuals have degraded, cheapened, upturned, perverted, and hollowed out the institution of marriage. Kim Davis has been married four times. Twice to the same man. She had kids out of wedlock. Not exactly the paragon of traditional family values.

Yet, there is a silver lining here. Almost all of Davis’ less than stellar life decisions occurred before she was a born-again believer. By her own testimony, her faith has become central to her life in only the last four years.

This should not be overlooked. It highlights the central issue at the heart of the protection of “traditional family values.” For a long time, conservatives have pretended that their principles were embedded in natural laws. That people could be moral without necessarily being religious, because conservative principles were drawn inevitably and incontrovertibly from logic and nature.

Well, here we are. This is where natural and logical law and policy gets you. Kim Davis herself makes it clear: we won’t save the institution of marriage by upholding foundationless moral principles floating in a void of good intentions. No. There are two options here: human law or divine law. Natural law is a myth. No one can know it. It contradicts itself. Ultimately, when people claim natural law, they are merely attempting to give more gravity to their own merely human opinions. Most people that claim God’s Law are doing the same. At least the straightforward champions of merely human law are partially honest about the arbitrary boundaries of their jurisprudence.

And that’s why, if you are a Christian, your first job is to let God’s Law reign in your own life first. If enough of us would actually do that, we would see a difference in the world. The fact is that we are hypocrites. Don’t get me wrong. The leftists that oppose traditional family values are hypocrites too. They say anything and everything goes for themselves, but they want to force you to go against your beliefs. We do the same thing though, we just have different desires. Are we all like Josh Duggar, who headed up a traditional family values council while he was addicted to porn and actively pursuing adulterous affairs? No. But he is just the extreme example of how homosexuals view all of us.

Would it not be better if we lived according to the principles we wish society were shaped by? What if we expended more effort being personally pious and less effort trying to get the civil government to write or enforce pious laws. Wouldn’t that, even in some small way, shape society more than any legal revolution could? So keep doing what you’re doing, Kim Davis. Just make sure your life matches your convictions.