Kim Davis Unwittingly Issued Transgender Marriage License

Camryn Colen and his wife Alexis married in Kentucky in February
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 3, 2015 7:19 AM CDT
Kim Davis Unwittingly Issued Transgender Marriage License
Camryn Colen, a transgender man, and his wife Alexis married in February.   (Courtesy of Camryn Colen)

Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who has refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses since the US Supreme Court legalized the unions in June, unwittingly issued a marriage license to a transgender man and his girlfriend in February. Camryn Colen, a pizza deliveryman in rural Kentucky who was born Cathy and underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2013, tells the Trail Blazer that when he and his now-wife Alexis, who identifies as pansexual, "walked into her office [in February], she just saw two people in love." Camryn's birth certificate identifies him as a woman, but Davis didn't ask to see it before granting the marriage license, he tells the Guardian. They married hours later. "I kind of wish we would’ve waited, but we didn’t know, of course, this was going to happen," he says. Now, he adds, "we need to speak out and show she already did it."

Davis, who leads a Bible study for women at a local jail, is an elected official, and thus cannot be fired. She can, however, be impeached by the state legislature or found guilty of misconduct, which comes with a maximum one-year jail term, reports the Washington Post. For Camryn and Alexis, who've been together two years, it's become "bittersweet" to have a license issued by Davis. "She took me at face value and judged a book by its cover," Camryn tells the Guardian. "She shouldn’t do that; she should just see two people in love and grant them the ability to get married." (Kim Davis, meanwhile, was divorced in 1994, 2006, and in 2008.)

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