The media has made Kim Davis a conservative martyr, missing the bigger picture

[Commentary] The tale of Kim Davis, a county clerk from northeast Kentucky who was jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, is compelling. Davis, an elected official, broke the law and is being punished. That story is worth covering. The question is one of proportionality, of whether the all-out media blitz of a lone-wolf scofflaw accurately tells the much larger story of conservative states’ implementation of the US Supreme Court’s June ruling to legalize same-sex marriage. Washington Post writer Greg Sargent astutely pointed out “if anything, the more important story here is how little of this sort of resistance we’re seeing.” Sargent cited data from Freedom to Marry, a gay-rights advocacy group, which polled county and parish clerks on whether they were issuing same-sex marriage licenses in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas: 826 of 841 were indeed following the new law. Of course, that broader story is more difficult to tell.