On Friday, The Daily Beast succeeded in tracking down one of Kim Davis’s aforementioned gay friends, shortly after the Good Morning America segment in which she boasted of having several.
His name is Dallas Black of Morehead, Kentucky. He claims that he’s known Davis his entire life, and they became close after she helped him file some paperwork pertaining to his mother’s death. Now, he says he doesn’t even recognize her anymore.
“I really don’t know who Kim is at the moment,” he told The Daily Beast. “I really want to believe that the kind, sweet person who was there when my mom passed away is still there. I was friends with Kim in the past, but I don’t know this woman I’m seeing.”
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He also finds her take on gay marriage to be disingenuous, and calls the whole scandal a “media fiasco.”
“I somewhat feel like she is taking this to an extreme, because she didn’t become a Christian until four years ago. Kim Davis has become the face of Morehead, and that’s not the face we want to portray.”
He laments that she’s giving an impression that one of Kentucky’s most progressive towns is a “backwoods” mire of bigotry, when it’s actually a hotbed of coffee shops, art shows, and students. Its city council even passed an LGBT non-discrimination ordinance in 2013.
“This is kind of like a sanctuary for people who came to [Morehead State University],” Black says. “They live here now, they’ve made it their home because it’s so progressive. And now it’s like, what is this place we live in? This is not the home we know. We don’t feel safe now. That’s ultimately what she did. She made us feel like our home was invaded by strangers, and she made us strangers to it.”