Interracial Couple Denied Marriage License
I don't know how to react to this. It feels like it is part of a broader picture we have been watching develop. That picture has us regressing in ways which intuitively feels wrong. I've no idea how to get in the head of persons making these horrible decisions and understand even a little the knowledge, ideas and thought processes that make these decisions possible. Neither do I understand a system which permits such persons to be in a position to make them. I guess this runs parallel to my failure to understand how we let 9/11 happen, let the banks screw over the global financial system or how we let insurers take our healthcare system hostage. It's almost as if all the information government and business are gathering is being used to harm rather than serve the nation.
Day by day we keep adding to our burden without truly relieving ourselves of any of it. I wonder how long it will take before it becomes too much?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33332436/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/
Yes it's the "New South" where they treat their coloreds just like they're real people.
October 16, 2009 8:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Reinventing the past sometimes doesn't work out so well. We seem to be doing a lot of that of late.
Almost ten years into a new century and I sense we're reliving the first decade of the previous one. Just thinking about this has a very strange feel.
October 16, 2009 8:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate the sentiment, but I think you're looking at it the wrong way. There are hundreds of thousands of local officials in this country. One of them in Assend Parish, La. breaches his legal duty for reasons that are racist--though at least a slightly less evil kind of racism than his grandfather would have had if you take him at his word. And his doing that is so exceptional, so bizarre and so out of the ordinary that it it immediately becomes a national story and the guy gets held up to national condemnation. Not so long ago, what he did was the law. Now it's a national scandal.
In a country of three hundred million people, random statistical variance alone means that stuff like this guy getting elected and then acting out on his racist beliefs is going to happen from time to time. This is one of the reasons we set our governments up the way we did.
October 16, 2009 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Then according to James Madison and in the present circumstance our government could quite plausibly be said to be more than a little out of control and thus has failed it's obligation. And please appreciate I am referring to events across the broader national spectrum where the failures have been far reaching, extremely harmful and exceedingly difficult to remedy. I don't know how one might describe a system out of control but can't envision that what we have witnessed over the last decade or so doesn't meet the criteria. In my view the standard for failure has been easily met.
October 16, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Watched a noted Black Professor on CSPAN last night. Rerun from a call in show and man calling himself a white separatist came on the line. Very courteous the professor was courteous and...
The deep wounds are still there. Wont go away completely. Must keep up the fight always.
rush has sounded more and more racist every day until this last slap down that left him in tears.
beck is a racist pig who is given his own show because of ratings. Just smiling and oh soooooooo American.
The law is clear. The license cannot legally be withheld. period.
October 16, 2009 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
That is what is so outrageous. No interpretation is possible that allows witholding the license. In my view the only remedy is a lifetime disqualification for justice Bardwell. This is not a minor infraction. It can only be a willful intent to violate the law and the Constitution. That he supplies a perspective for his action isn't meaningful in any way.
October 16, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
A retired Federal Prosecutor with the DOJ friend of mine had this to say:
October 16, 2009 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
the nbc article has a poll on whether Bardwell should be punished.
i'm ashamed to say that nearly 24% of the people who've voted thusfar think that he, as an unpaid elected official, should be allowed to perform only the marriage ceremonies he wants to.
October 16, 2009 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I saw the poll and was frankly surprised at that number. I expected some percent to arrive at a flawed conclusion but not that number.
As I said in another post, in this first decade of this new century we seem to be reliving the first decade of the last century. We've changed over the last century but if the idea of non-conformance with the law of the land is any indication that change is superficial at best.
I think since Obama took office events have been a real eye opener for some. I place myself in that category. I didn't really appreciate the extent of the racial bias or general state of social bias that still exists in this country. This very much renders as supect statements of persons such as Jeff Sessions and others who have a spotty history of racism who even today speak in ways that hedge the issue. We have a long way to go.
October 16, 2009 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's the same way of thinking behind letting a pharmacist refuse to fill prescriptions for anything their "conscience" disagrees with. There are plenty of holy rollers who believe that mixing of the races is a sin.
I agree with all of the above; there is no basis to deny the license, and if someone in a position of authority has personally decided to reinterpret the law, they should go find something else to do. No one should be at the mercy of a professional's personal whims.
October 16, 2009 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Stupid question: Would he have married them if they already had children?
October 16, 2009 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
The question isn't valid. There are no qualifiers allowed in the law. At least not in the realm in question.
Not to ruffle your feathers Cville but you don't usually ask stupid questions. That is more my territory. You OK today?
October 16, 2009 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
tpc, you never say stupid things; I disagree with you from time to time, but I never think you're stupid. My comment was meant to demonstrate rhetorically the weakness of the "justification" the judge gave. He said he denied them the license because future children would suffer bullying, etc. I was kind of wondering what his reasoning would be if they already had kids.
Such an ironic statement from someone who had just bullied that child's future parents.
October 16, 2009 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
The question isn't valid. There are no qualifiers allowed in the law. At least not in the realm in question.
Considering that the local official in question did not let the law stop him from denying an interracial couple a marriage license, the fact that the law has no qualifiers is irrelevant to what is being asked and so yours in an invalid answer.
October 16, 2009 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Local law enforcement has nothing to do with it. Law enforcement has no jurisdiction in the judicial process and especially as it applies to the manner in which a judge interprets the law. That falls in the realm of the judiciary and any remedy for a faulty ruling has to come from a higher court in that system.
October 17, 2009 2:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
well his rational was ridiculous from the start. He said society doesn't accept interracial children and that was his 'reason.
Aside from the fact that what he was really saying is that 'he' has a problem with interracial marriage and 'he' has a problem with interracial children, the man we just elected President of the United States is from an interracial marriage.
Yes, a lot of yuck is coming to the surface right now. Rude awakenings and ugly realities abound...
However, the positive side is that these things were already happening and coming to the surface allows for the scum to be cleared away, changes to be made, but it will definitely be in proportion to the will of the people and their participation what happens from here.
October 16, 2009 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thats true. Maybe the exposure will relegate the worst offenders to being outcasts of our society. Ferreting out the fakers will take some real effort though.
What I would really like to see is an unobtrusive prohibition against lying or misrepresenting facts for any of our senators or congresspersons. The blatant distortions and flat out lies make me puke. And they truly don't get it why so many people hold them in such low regard. It should come as no surprise that they make such awful choices. Yet I am caught off guard every time they manage to outdo themselves.
October 16, 2009 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess they feel like if they have to choose between "regard," and "big bucks," they'll go for the lobbyists because it's a lot more fun. Oh. And up to now it sure has worked. I hope we see some uprising in the primaries to throw the bums out!
October 16, 2009 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
They must have very low self esteem. Money is OK but the human condition doesn't allow us to ignore the inner voice of our conscience. Or are their consciences completely dulled by a lifetime of privilege and excess?
October 16, 2009 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
How can anyone think this guy's a racist? According to the AP story, he has "piles and piles of black friends, they come to his house and use his bathroom" - just like real people...
October 16, 2009 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is just another reminder to me that the struggle for marriage equality goes on. The people who are opposed to gays and lesbians marrying today are the same people who opposed interracial marriages a generation ago (and apparently for some, still do).
Its the same battle.
October 17, 2009 2:24 AM | Reply | Permalink