Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who has gone to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, has become a cause celebre on the left. As Ian Millhiser, an attorney and writer for ThinkProgress, put it: “She’s the perfect villain.”

But while the media show trial of Davis rolls on, a few facts have been left by the wayside. Have you noticed that while her three divorces have been extensively chronicled, very few media outlets have pointed out that she is an elected Democrat? Can you imagine her party registration would go unmentioned if she were a Republican?

Secondly, the same people who have sternly demanded that the Rule of Law be enforced and that Davis must be hauled off to jail, have been silent when other elected officials chose not to obey a marriage law that conflicted with their conscience.

In 2004, then San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (now California’s lieutenant governor) ordered city clerks to issue gay marriage licenses in direct violation of state and federal laws. Newsom unleashed a political and legal tempest February 12 when he ordered the taxpayer-funded city clerk’s office to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a supporter of gay rights, opposed Newsom’s publicity stunt and demanded he obey the law. Similarly, as Sean Davis of the Federalist website points out, there was “no evidence of these principled law enforcement purists chastising California state officials for refusing to enforce or defend the Prop 8 ballot initiative in California” that reinstated traditional marriage in 2008.

I myself have often written in favor of an approach that’s different from either side in the marriage debate: “Many Americans believe it would be better if we left matters to individuals and religious bodies. The cherished principle of separating church and state should be extended as much as possible into separating marriage and state.”

But the debate has clearly moved in a different direction. But that doesn’t mean that the hypocrisy of those who’ve won that debate — supporters of gay marriage — when they proclaim the Rule of Law is now to be enforced with jail time for dissenters.