Kentucky governor says shootings are a "cultural problem"

By ROBERT RAY and BRUCE SCHREINER | Associated Press

BENTON, Ky. – This was supposed to be Spirit Week at Marshall County High School.

Instead, homecoming events were canceled, the governor was in town lamenting the nation's moral decay, and preparations were being made for the funerals of two 15-year-old children.

Tuesday's attack by a fellow classmate at the high school left more than a dozen survivors with gunshot wounds or other injuries, and three of them remain hospitalized. Hundreds more were scarred by what they saw.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin called on Americans Friday to "wake up" and recognize that school shootings are a "cultural problem."

"We have become desensitized to death, we have become desensitized to killing, we have become desensitized to empathy for our fellow man and it's coming at an extraordinary price and we have got to look at the root causes of this," Bevin told The Associated Press.

"We can't celebrate death in video games, celebrate death in TV shows, celebrate death in movies, celebrate death in musical lyrics and remove any sense of morality and sense of higher authority and then expect that things like this are not going to happen," he added.

The Republican governor spoke at a community event in Benton, where he was followed by the father of one of the slain students. Sobbing, Jasen Holt asked for prayers for all the "sweet kids" who were killed, injured or traumatized.

"It's not only ours, it's about all of them," said Holt, whose daughter Bailey Nicole Holt was the first to die. "Just pray and take care of each and every one of them."

The governor declared a statewide day of prayer Sunday for the grief-stricken county. It was reminiscent of his response to a wave of urban gun violence last year. Bevin called then on the power of prayer to help combat Louisville's rising murder rate, and urged people to form prayer groups to walk high-crime neighborhoods. Skeptics wondered aloud whether that would deter gun-wielding thugs.

Bevin, a social conservative who has made it clear that he won't sign laws that restrict guns, said he's prepared for more skepticism as he once again asks Kentuckians to pray. But he said he believes God intervenes on behalf "of his people" when they call out to him in prayer.

"There are people who do not understand and do not believe in the things we're talking about right now," he said. "And there will be all the social media trolls and people that will scorn and mock and will ridicule the fact that we would call out to our creator at a time like this."

At the same time, Bevin said prayer won't help explain the inexplicable.

"There really are no answers to the questions that are in our minds," he said. "And even when we have all the facts, we still don't have the answers. That's just a harsh reality of this. Because this side of eternity, there are no answers to the very things that have torn this community apart. But this I know: We can sustain one another, we can support one another."

Authorities, meanwhile, are hoping to discover why 15-year-old boy would have opened fire on his classmates, all 14 to 18, as they waited for the morning bell Tuesday. Bailey Holt died at the scene, while Preston Ryan Cope was declared dead at a hospital in Nashville.

Brian Cope told the Louisville Courier Journal that he knew his son was among the victims when he peered into an ambulance and saw the Nike socks he had laid out the night before.

"We want to thank each and every person, from the East Coast to the West Coast, because we feel the prayers, we feel so much love," Cope said.

The high school reopened Friday with an assembly in the gymnasium. Funerals for the two teens will be held Sunday. The families requested privacy, but said they will make a public statement on Saturday.

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Schreiner reported from Frankfort, Kentucky. Associated Press Writer Adam Beam in Frankfort contributed to this report.

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The Gift of Religious Freedom

Matt Barber | Dec 27, 2015

Last Tuesday, Kentucky’s new governor, Matt Bevin, issued an executive order that eliminates the names of all county clerks from marriage licenses and protects the unalienable constitutional rights and religious freedoms of Kim Davis and all other clerks in Kentucky.

“This action is a fulfillment of a campaign promise by Gov. Bevin and is directly what our client Kim Davis has been requesting for months,” said Mat Staver, Davis’ attorney and founder of the Christian civil rights firm Liberty Counsel. “This promise will enable her and other clerks to do their jobs without compromising religious values and beliefs.”

The governor’s statement reads in part:

“To ensure that the sincerely held religious beliefs of all Kentuckians are honored, Executive Order 2015-048 directs the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives to issue a revised marriage license form to the offices of all Kentucky County Clerks. The name of the County Clerk is no longer required to appear on the form.”

While the First Amendment alone should be enough to ensure these safeguards, the unconstitutional actions of five “progressive” lawyers on the U.S. Supreme Court, who, back in June, presumed to capriciously redefine the immutable meaning of marriage, has created legal and moral chaos from coast-to-coast, making fixes such as that issued by Gov. Bevin necessary. Furthermore, these extremist lawyers’ subjective and unprecedented opinion will require additional fixes in all other states to reaffirm Christians’ objective and constitutionally guaranteed rights. Although the fight to repair the perversion of marriage committed by the high court will continue, this is an important step in the right direction.

You may recall that Davis was arbitrarily imprisoned for five days earlier this year by federal Judge David Bunning for exercising her religious liberties and refusing to violate her conscience by signing her name to, and, thereby, giving her official approval of, counterfeit “gay marriage” licenses. These licenses, of course, violate both natural law and the manifold biblical proscriptions against the sin of unnatural same-sex deviancy. Bunning’s tyrannical move backfired tremendously, earning Davis’ the support of tens-of-millions of Christians worldwide, as well as both a private audience with, and the express support of, Pope Francis.

“This is a wonderful Christmas gift for Kim Davis,” continued Staver. “This executive order is a clear, simple accommodation on behalf of Kim Davis and all Kentucky clerks. Kim can celebrate Christmas with her family knowing she does not have to choose between her public office and her deeply held religious convictions. What former Gov. Beshear could have done but refused to do, Gov. Bevin did with this executive order. We are pleased that Gov. Bevin kept his campaign promise to accommodate the religious rights of Kim Davis. We will notify the courts of the executive order, and this order proves our point that a reasonable accommodation should have been done to avoid Kim having to spend time in jail.”

“Bah humbug!” cried the ACLU.

“Governor Bevin’s executive action has added to the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over marriage licensing in Kentucky,” claimed ACLU of Kentucky Legal Director William Sharp.

“The requirement that the county clerk’s name appear on marriage licenses is prescribed by Kentucky law and is not subject to unilateral change by the governor,” he demanded, proving that the anti-Christian left’s goal was never about so-called “marriage equality” but, rather, was to force Christians to deny marriage reality and personally affirm, under penalty of law, mock “gay marriages.”

The ACLU will soon have little more to say on the subject as lawmakers are poised to further codify and build upon Bevin’s executive order. “Next month, the Kentucky legislature is expected to update the state’s marriage laws and will consider a provision exempting county clerks from having to issue them,” reports ABC News. “Davis said Kentucky’s marriage laws have been ‘completely eviscerated’ by the Supreme Court’s ruling and said she would be willing to come to the state Capitol to testify about any changes.”

Other state legislatures, as well as the U.S. Congress, must soon follow suit if any progress is to be made into the impasse between secularist change agents hostile to religious freedom, and the faithful Christians who enjoy it as a matter of law.

“In an interview with the Associated Press about her year at the center of one of the biggest social changes in decades, Davis described it as ‘a very emotional and a very real situation to all people.’ But she said simply telling others about her faith was not ‘going to make anybody believe anything.’ And so she put her faith in action by refusing to issue the licenses,” added ABC.

“‘No one would ever have remembered a county clerk that just said … ‘Even though I don’t agree with it, it’s OK. I’ll do it,’ Davis said. ‘If I could be remembered for one thing, it’s that I was not afraid to not compromise myself.’”

Kim Davis will certainly be remembered for her steadfast refusal to compromise herself. But she, along with Gov. Bevin, will also be remembered for helping, this Christmas season, to re-establish the gift of religious freedom for the people of Kentucky.

Even so, the war for our culture will continue into the New Year and well beyond.

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