Joseph Gerth

Kentucky’s biggest export to Romania may very well be hate.

Believing that spreading her anti-gay bigotry in Kentucky wasn’t enough, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has gone international.

Davis, of course, made headlines in the United States two years ago when she was jailed for not granting marriage licenses after the Supreme Court ruled gay and lesbian couples had the right to marry.

Now, she’s packed her ankle-length tunics and she’s taken her show on the road.

To the former Soviet bloc.

Yep. Davis dislikes gay people so much that she traveled more than 5,000 miles from Rowan County so that she could tell the good people of Romania that they ought not like them either.

Of course, she says it’s not hate that motivates her. She says that she’s there fighting an attack on religious freedom.

Bosh.

Allowing two gay men or two gay women to get married a half-world away is not an infringement on Davis’ religious freedom.

Let me put it this way, Kim. The only way gay marriage would infringe on your religious freedom is if we forced you to get a divorce from your husband for a fourth time and marry a woman.

According to The New York Times, Davis went on a tour of six Romanian cities organized by Liberty Counsel, the conservative legal and advocacy group that represented her in her battle to stop the gay people of Rowan County.

The Liberty Counsel, as you know, is terribly misnamed.

It stands for liberty only if you’re a conservative Christian who believes that rights should be deprived from anyone who doesn’t agree with you.

In the interest of truth in advertising, might I suggest “Theocracy Counsel?”

But, anyway, Romania is struggling with the issue of gay marriage.

It was only 2001 when the country got rid of anti-gay laws that called for long prison sentences for anyone suspected of not being straight.

Those laws were put in place by Nicolae Ceaușescu, the former general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party. You remember him. Sweet guy. Convicted in 1989 of genocide.

Commentary: Wait – Kim Davis was nominated for the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame?

Now, about 3 million of Romania’s 20 million people have signed a petition calling for an amendment to the country’s constitution that would outlaw gay marriage.

(I hope you see the irony here — a Kentucky county clerk who couldn’t follow the U.S. Constitution telling people in another country how to write their constitution.)

Unable to drag America and Kentucky back to a time when gays were discriminated against, she’s now trying to do it in Eastern Europe.

If they’re smart, the people of Romania will tell Davis she needs to go back to Kentucky, not that we really want her and the shame she brings us here.

And elected officials here should focus more on exporting things like bourbon and cars and horses. Instead of exporting hate.

Joseph Gerth’s column runs on most Sundays and at various times throughout the week. He can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courier-journal.com.