Battle for gay rights in small-town Kentucky election is a symbol of Donald Trump's raging culture war

David Ermold is back at the county clerk’s office, this time just to pay for his car registration. Swiping a debit card, he quips: “I hope I’m not blocked.” He means by his bank, not the folk behind the counter, but he quickly sees he might be misconstrued. “I wasn’t saying it that way.”

Funny, but not that funny. We’re in Morehead, a small university town in eastern Kentucky of barely 7,000 souls, which was thrust into the national headlines two years ago when the incumbent county clerk, Kim Davis, refused to issue marriage certificates to betrothed gay couples in defiance of the US Supreme Court which had just legalised same-sex marriage across the land.

It was quite the mess. Ms Davis boldly told them she was withholding their licenses “by God’s authority”, never mind the court, and that to issue them would conflict with her Christian faith. She became a hero to the far right, not least when she was sentenced to five days in jail for her trouble. Two presidential hopefuls, Senator Ted Cruz and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, descended on the town, hoping to use her stand to burnish their evangelical credentials.

All is better now, sort of. She regained her freedom, the state tinkered with the law so county clerks no longer have to put their names on marriage licences, and the gay couples she had denied finally got to tie the knot, among them Mr Ermold and his now husband, David Moore.

Suddenly, though, the town of Morehead is bracing for another round in the spotlight. Ms Davis’s term is up this year, and guess who has decided to run against her – Mr Ermold, of course.

Which explains why every time he steps into this office, even for something like a car registration, there is a frisson in the air. Ms Davis is out on this particular afternoon, but her son, Nathan Davis, is there. He waves gingerly from his desk, above which hangs a large wooden sign declaring: “PRAY ALWAYS, WORK HARD, TRUST GOD.” That will have to go, if Mr Ermold wins.

The idea of trying to unseat Ms Davis had been in his mind for a while, when one day in early December Mr Ermold strode to exactly this spot to register as a candidate for her office. She had to help him with the paperwork, a prickly moment. She hummed a hymn under her breath – “Jesus Paid it All” – as she worked. When she was done she wished him and his husband a happy Christmas, before wondering: “You do believe in Christmas, don’t you?”

“I don’t hate her and I don’t think she hates me,” comments Mr Ermold, 44, taking us on a tour of Rowan County, which he hopes one day to watch over. There is Morehead itself, with its small university campus, a single, low-slung main street and nearby Cave Run Lake. “I don’t see how you can say such snarky things and not know you are sending some kind of message.”

open image in gallery

First, Mr Ermold must see off three other Democrat hopefuls in the primary in May next year. But he doesn’t seem worried about any of them. While he has no experience of politics – he teaches English literature and communication at a private college – he does have good name recognition. He will inevitably have the support of the not insignificant local LGBT community.

Assuming the final contest is between himself and Ms Davis, it will be beyond anything this county has ever seen – or any county in the land probably – in terms of ferocity and of money. While Mr Ermold is keeping the numbers to himself for now, he hints that the money is already pouring in. “The response has been phenomenal,” he says. Over dinner at Melini’s, an Italian restaurant, he lets slip he has already received unsolicited donations from the actresses Susan Sarandon and Amy Schumer. Another cheque arrived from a producer of the TV show, The Big Bang Theory.

A race between them would also take on outsize dimensions because, while the issue of gay marriage may have been resolved in America its intersection with religious freedoms has not. Seen by some as the last gay rights battleground, the issue is embodied in a case now before the US Supreme Court involving a Colorado baker who is defending his decision not to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Lawyers for Donald Trump’s White House appeared before the court to argue in support of the baker, who says his freedom of expression and freedom of religious rights protect him from having to provide services to gay customers.

open image in gallery

That, in turn, means national organisations from both sides of America’s still-raging culture wars are also certain to show up in Rowan County next year. Mr Ermold is hoping to win the endorsement of the Victory Fund, an organisation committed to helping LGBT candidates across the country. From the start, Ms Davis has had the backing of a far-right group called the Liberty Counsel, with its leader, Mat Staver, acting as her lawyer. Ms Davis is facing three separate civil lawsuits, including one filed by Mr Ermold and Mr Moore.

In other words, it could turn very rough, very quickly. “It might get a bit ugly from the other side but it’s not going to be from me,” Mr Ermold offers. “They are going to say I am homosexual and all that. And they will try to find any way to make it sound derogatory.”

Inevitably, Mr Ermold’s decision to take on Ms Davis is being characterised by some as nothing more than a quest for revenge. “It’s a personal vendetta,” Mr Staver claims in response to his filing as a candidate. “He probably does not realise that issuing marriage licenses is an infinitesimal part of the job. It’s an insignificant part of running the clerk’s office.”

That rankles with Mr Ermold, who says he is aware that there is much more to the job. “I’m a one-issue candidate, that’s all I am running on? No,” he protests. “There is a lot of things to clean up over there, and when we start digging we will see what we find.” He wonders at Ms Davis’s son working for her. And the fact that her mother was county clerk for 30 years before her.

He insists he won’t let the contest become too personal. “We don’t want to talk about Kim Davis, because we never did,” he explains. “She is a person and I used to say she got caught up in something she didn’t expect and couldn’t handle. Now I feel a little bit differently.”

That’s partly because she herself won’t let go of the issue. In October, she left on a nine-day trip to Romania to give her backing to leaders of a campaign battling same-sex marriage in that country. Her itinerary, organised by Liberty Counsel, included meetings with Orthodox Christian bishops.

That she is still actively opposing gay rights makes Mr Ermold's mission all the more urgent, in part because of the shadow it throws on Rowan County and Kentucky. “I think we got a really bad rep for 2015 and I want to show people all the good things we have here. We want to fix this and we have the chance to wipe this whole thing clean,” he explains.

He believes that the minute Ms Davis is stripped of office, her usefulness to organisations such as Liberty Counsel will be gone. That, he says, would be good not just for his county but for the whole country. “Once we remove her from office… she becomes irrelevant at that point.”

Yet, for all that, payback is surely part of what motivates him. If Mr Ermold prefers not to explicitly admit it, his husband is more clear. “I am way sick of it,” Mr Moore says at the dinner table. “But people around here were hurt by her. They want closure, they want a kind of healing.”

Mr Ermold beams when a waiter at the restaurant recognises him and pledges his support. “I am going to win, I am pretty sure. We are going to give her a run for her money.” (Mr Moore makes a face to suggest he is not so sure.) Even if Donald Trump himself shows up, a notion that may not be entirely far-fetched, he won’t be fazed.

“If Trump comes down here, you’d see some rallies on our side that would be unbelievable,” he predicts. “I think people aren’t going to put up with that. This is a county clerk’s race. This isn’t a circus.”

Except that’s exactly what this little race in the Appalachian hills of Kentucky is bound to become.