The reason marriage equality has succeeded in the last few years is that fair-minded Americans came to understand the central issue: when same-sex couples win the right to marry, they gain something real. Couples who have been together for decades are suddenly, in the eyes of the law, next of kin, where before they had been strangers. Conversely, when they are withheld the right to marry, they lose something real.

When opponents of marriage equality lose, they lose nothing. At most, they lose the concept of the primacy of heterosexuality, the idea that opposite-sex relationships are better, more desirable, more real, simply by virtue of being more prevalent. They lose a concept. In the most generous interpretation of their argument, in the eyes of the law, they lose a concept.

You can't get a photograph of a losing idea, at least not one that can compete with a picture of two old women, together since their 20s, finally on the same legal footing as their heterosexual friends and siblings, relieved, in love, victorious, safe. To win a PR campaign, you must convince people they are losing or gaining something tangible. If such a thing does not exist, you must invent it.

And thus, the product of "religious freedom" is brought to market. (You'll notice that nobody was talking about "religious freedom" until relatively recently. Before, when opponents talked about marriage equality, they said it would lead to men marrying their toasters. That was last year's model. It didn't sell.) Suddenly, those who opposed marriage equality had very concrete things to lose. Suddenly, our nation's florists, photographers, and cake-bakers were at risk of having to do their jobs for all of their customers.

And even that product didn't really move. "We don't serve your kind" is discrimination, pure and simple. It's un-American. We know that. Kim Davis knows that.

What the opponents of marriage equality needed, what Bryan Fischer and Tony Perkins and all the desperate homophobes of the Liberty Counsel had to have to stay in business for another year, was a martyr. (They almost had it with those "no wedding pizza for gays" people, but then that GoFundMe page came along and made them rich.) They needed a timid, God-fearing person to be hauled off to prison.

They got that today.

Kim Davis, because of her deeply-held belief in a religion to which she converted four years ago (her whole thing makes so much more sense when you think about how fresh she is to Christianity, doesn't it? Hers is the zeal of the brand-new convert. It's like she's six months into Crossfit) refused to issue marriage licenses out of her office so that she would never endorse a same-sex union with her signature, and now she's going to jail. As Mark Joseph Stern points out in Slate, good lawyers– lawyers who are working for the good of their clients, not lawyers who are trying to stay relevant in a world that has outgrown them–tend to do what they can to keep their clients out of jail. The Liberty Counsel, who counsels for the liberty to oppress gay people and pretty much nothing else, should be out of business in 2015. When we get that picture of Kim Davis in handcuffs, they'll have the image they need to stay afloat until 2025*.

Kim Davis, drunk on newfound religion, searching for love and purpose and acceptance as it seems she always has, has put her life in the hands of people who want nothing more than to see her in jail. The longer the better.

It's hard to feel good about this one. God help us.

*Your nastiest, cleverest Kim Davis tweets are going in that same fundraising mailer. Your words and actions in this moment are just as important as hers. Avoid the heel turn, my friends.

Dave Holmes Editor-at-Large Dave Holmes is Esquire's L.A.-based editor-at-large.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io