“I’m not a racist (but)…”

Coming from the AP via HuffPost:

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

Yeah, okay. You’re not making yourself sound any better, Judge.

The couple can have as many kids as they want. Go nuts with the kid making, you two. Have a shitload of kids out of wedlock if you have to. Don’t listen to this idiotic judge who thinks he knows “what’s best” for you and your non-existent children.

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”

I suppose it’s just too bad they live in Louisiana, if that’s the general attitude down there. That totally sucks.

Love is love and kids are kids (except in cases of genetic sexual attraction which is just pure yuck in a bucket). I hope if they try getting married again they’ll find themselves a JP who can keep his prejudiced attitudes out of it. In this day and age, it just seems ridiculous that people still think that way.

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

“I try to treat everyone equally,” he said.

You, Judge, are not treating everyone equally, not by a long shot. You have an obligation on the part of your duties of office to marry anyone who buys a license. And a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union agrees with me.

“It is really astonishing and disappointing to see this come up in 2009,” said American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana attorney Katie Schwartzmann. She said the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 “that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry.”

The ACLU sent a letter to the Louisiana Judiciary Committee, which oversees the state justices of the peace, asking them to investigate Bardwell and recommending “the most severe sanctions available, because such blatant bigotry poses a substantial threat of serious harm to the administration of justice.”

Last quote:

“I’ve been a justice of the peace for 34 years and I don’t think I’ve mistreated anybody,” Bardwell said. “I’ve made some mistakes, but you have to. I didn’t tell this couple they couldn’t get married. I just told them I wouldn’t do it.”

And you need to stop refusing to do your job because you don’t like the look of the couple. If you do a marriage ceremony for one couple, you must do the same for all, regardless if your personal feelings about the people involved. Surely you’ve married idiots who should never been allowed to sign a marriage contract, haven’t you? But you’ll deny these two simply based on skin tone and possible problems down the road? Have you ever bothered to put the kibosh on any other couple’s dream of marriage due to some imagined future threat? Somehow I doubt it.

Terence McKay and his fiance, Beth Humphrey say they’re considering filing a discrimination complaint against Bardwell, so good for them.

Ludicrous story. Simply ludicrous.