Discussing Kentucky clerk Kim Davis on Real Time this week, host Bill Maher said that Davis’s subverting the law by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples is a perfect example of the “sharia law” conservatives rail against.
“If you say, as Kim Davis and her ilk, and Ted Cruz and all those people say that actually ‘I can ignore the rule of man because the rule book of God said’ — then you are Iran. Then you are Saudi Arabia. Then you are Sharia law,” Maher said.
Conservative commentator and panel member Linda Chavez told Maher that there are still a substantial number of religiously conservative people in the U.S., and he’ll have to “bring them along” gradually if their minds are ever going to be changed about gay marriage.
Daily Beast Editor Michael Moynihan took issue with the notion that they can slowly be convinced.
“I don’t think that’s her intention here, to sort of slowly bring people along to this idea of gay marriage,” Moynihan said. “She comes out of jail. Every Republican is waiting to have his photo taken with her. They have a shout-and-holler Cletus ceremony, everyone is holding up crosses, and Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger‘ is playing… well, I’m glad we’re all coming along very slowly.”
But probably the most poignant comment came from writer and panel member Salman Rushdie, who famously had his own experiences dealing with religious nuts.
“One of the things that is a classic trope of the religious bigot, is while they’re denying people their rights, they claim that their rights are being denied,” Rushdie said. “While they are persecuting people, they claim to be persecuted. While they are behaving colossally offensively, they claim to be the offended party.”
Watch the exchange below, via Real Time with Bill Maher:
Featured image via screenshot
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