Kentucky County clerk Kim Davis claims her faith keeps her from following the law of the land and issue marriage licenses to gay couples in Rowan County.

So now she’s in jail, sent there by a federal judge for contempt of court for refusing to follow the law of the land to approve licenses for gay couples to marry in her small part of Kentucky.

Her jailing has the bible-thumping community up in self-righteous droves, claiming that — among other things — that the purported “word of God” is more powerful than the law that governs what we do and, because of that belief, they don’t have to enforce any laws that violate their concept of “faith.”

Contempt of court is an indefinite sentence determined by a judge who thinks a criminal should stay behind bars as long as she or he wishes to ignore laws she does not agree with.

And Kim Davis is a criminal.  She is now one in jail, which is where she belongs.

U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning gave Davis a chance to avoid jail is she “purged her contempt” and allowed one of her deputies to sign marriage licenses in her place.  Davis said no.

Religious zealots praise Davis as  martyr to their cause but, in my opinion as a newspaperman who covers the news, their cause is nothing less than blatant homophobia — a callous disregard for rights of human beings imposed by bigots.

In a free society, we must tolerate hate, bigotry and discrimination within our midst.  If the God they promote with that bigotry and discrimination does exists then their actions will be judged after they are gone from this earth.  That is a reality that might face after their deaths.

In life, however, they must be the law  and that law is best served without religious zealotry or vain attempts to misconstrue the convoluted, conflicted, selectively-quoted and hypocritical tome called the Bible.