Man this shouldn't be a surprise, but I have to say that it is. Refusing to marry a couple due to them being interracial? And then having the balls to say that it's not because you're racist but because you'e concerned for the children? Oh spare me the sanctimonious bullshit.
via RawStory:
A justice of the peace in northern Louisiana has refused to grant a marriage license to an interracial couple because he believes it would harm any children born of that relationship.“I’m not a racist,” Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in the state's Tangihapoa Parish, told the Hammond, Louisiana, Daily Star. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”
The Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is calling the justice's move "tragic and illegal.
Further quotes by Bardwell indicates that he perhaps got more of an issue with race then he wants to believe.
He said:
The paper quotes the justice of the peace as saying that “99 percent of the time” an interracial couple will consist of a black man and white woman, and “I find that rather confusing.”
And then he also doubled down on the race rhetoric by saying the following:
Bardwell said that neither black nor white society accepts the offspring of an interracial couple, and the children suffer as a result. He also stated that interracial families are unstable, and the children of these families often end up in the care of grandparents.
“In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer,” he said, adding that "if he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all," the Daily Star writes.
“I try to treat everyone equally,” he said.
And it's that last statement that just makes me not know whether I want to laugh or cry. Here's someone that is discriminating against a couple who want to get married, based on the fact that both of their skin colors are not the same. That's treating everyone equal? Oh but he said he "TRY"s to treat everyone equally. He didn't say he DOES treat everyone equally, which it's clear that he doesn't.
I'd love to know where he gets his statistics from saying that interracial couples are unstable and the children end up living with their grandparents.
I know plenty of white couples who are SEVERELY unstable and their kids are living with grandparents. I know single white mothers who are incredibly immature and keep popping out babies, only to have them taken away and put in the system, or sending them to live with the child's grandmother or grandfather.
And I also know many interracial couples that provide a very stable and loving home for their children. And they provide for their kids, and the comments of Bardwell are a slap in the face to every hardworking interracial couple out there.
Discriminatory and prejudiced thinking like that of Mr. Bardwell, is why we have laws in this country prohibiting this very sort of thing.
In fact Bardwell is breaking the law by refusing to marry them.
In 1967, Loving vs. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court ruled by unanimous 9-0 vote that the states laws against interracial marriage was unconstitutional.
Now if you want to voice your concerns about the discrimination that mixed race children face, that's a valid concern. However you can't base your decisions on that. You cannot prevent two consenting adults who love each other from getting married, whether they're the same sex or different races.
You just don't do it.
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