Interracial couple denied marriage license in Tangipahoa Parish
I'm still having a hard time believing this. On top of the fact that the AP is reporting it which means its bound to get national attention in short order. Look at this quote:
"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."
I feel like he read my previous post and just quoted it verbatim.
I'm so stunned by this idiot I'm not even sure if I can formulate a rant.
I"m gonna go ahead and declare this more humiliating than the Louisiana Science Education Act.
7 comments:
A good place to start any rant on this topic is that this news story occurred on the same day as the United State's inter-racial President came to visit. He seems to be doing fine.
A good book on this topic is "Life Along the Color Line" by Gregory Williams.
It's the number 4 (was number 2) most read story on BBCNews.com.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8310509.stm
As a Louisiana expatriate, I can tell you that you are absolutely correct. A few of my Missouri friends sent this to me within hours of it hitting the wire. Represent, Louisiana. Ugh.
The Gambit's Twitter stream said the only good thing about the balloon boy story was that it overshadowed the actions of this bigoted idiot. So nice to see the rest of the state staying this classy. 8-P
Well if it was a homosexual couple it wouldn't even had made the news....
That was a good post, first anon.
"Life Along the Color Line" was a good book.
When President Obama was elected, the writer Alice Walker (whose own inter-racial marriage broke laws and forced legal change back in the day) said that one of the things she hoped an Obama Presidency would do was help a lot of families who crossed over the color line, maybe even many generations ago, to cross back, to reclaim their full ancestry (and true birthright) by acknowledging all their ancestors.
She used this idea of "crossing back over", as if the line itself would still be there, but I wonder if this full accounting and acceptance she wrote of doesn't help abolish the line itself.
Go back far enough, or recogzize all your living relatives, and almost all of us come from inter-racial and inter-cultural families.
For some families, respecting the older ancestors and the younger members of the families will require pissing off a couple of bigoted generations in the middle. It's worth it.
I wonder if this man will have "piles and piles" of friends-- of any race-- using his bathroom now that he has exposed his deep unwellness.
If you need to, please tell your Daddy or your Grandma:
You're not a 'friend' to your gay friends if you vote against their civil rights and against their families.
You're not a 'friend' to your black friends just because you let them use your toilet.
You aren't creating a 'tolerant' or 'accepting' society if what you are tolerating or accepting is hate.
A blessing on all true love and on this marriage.
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