Interracial couple denied marriage license. In 2009. WTH?

[terriko]

terriko : Did you see this? It's just... wow. Link to article
miko : Shit, I guess we're miserable!
terriko: and shouldn't exist.
miko: But because we do, our lives must be awkward and terrible and not worth living.
miko: Oh well, at least they got press and will be able to get him out of office.

Seriously, WTH? As someone who is (a) biracial and (b) an actual person, I'm more than a little appalled.

Comments

Bull

[dnivie.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Am I part of "white society" ? 'cos if I am, I'd like to point out that this is the first time in my life that I've even considered your race.

Besides, the "justification" is crap -- It's a cowardly thing to push the children ahead of him, I doubt he'd see it very differently if (say) the male was infertile.

There's a hundred properties of parents for which the kids may (or may not) suffer. Do we refuse marriage-certificates to people with freckles, or red hair now ? Or how about actual medical problems, do we refuse marriage to people who've got inheritable genetic disease ? I think not.

Good on him for exposing himself though, for sure this will cause more suffering for him than for the couple in question -- as well it should.

Louisiana

[(Anonymous)]

This appears to have happened in Louisiana and is thus---unfortunately---not particularly surprising. There are segments of Louisiana's society that viewed the consequence of hurricane Katrina with some amount of relief, believe it or not---it reduced the proportion of "undesirables" in New Orleans, for one thing.

Interracial dating and marriage is still a sensitive issue in much of the US South, some of which only decriminalized it in the late 60s, and things change "on the ground" very slowly in parts of the South which deeply resent social change they feel have been foisted on them against their will. It was/is a ritual among right-wing presidential candidates to visit Bob Jones University which did have (and probably still has) a policy officially discouraging interracial dating, on the grounds that God created races as part of His plan for humanity, and "race mixing" was an act of disobedience to said plan.

So you still have people in Louisiana who think it's acceptable to deny a mixed-race couple a marriage license as though it were their business.

Re: Louisiana

[(Anonymous)]

Signed, Asad

Re: Louisiana

[terriko]

Yeah, but there's lots of things that aren't really that surprising that still fall under "WTF"

Re: Bull

[terriko]

I don't usually think about my race either, but it makes it a lot harder to ignore nonsense like this.

You know the only thing he really needs to protect the children from is people like him. If he could just grow up, there'd be that much less suffering of children in the world. :P

The thing I find most amazing...

[(Anonymous)]

...is that, aside from the decision itself, he doesn't sound /crazy/. Sure, his value system is (more than) a little messed up, but it's internally consistent; his conclusions follow logically from his premises, and he articulates his reasons clearly and coherently.

Rabid psychos and brain-dead bigots I get. I don't like them, but they don't really surprise me. Calm, considered and sober discrimination doesn't make sense to me.

Alex
P.S.: The quoted conversation is highly amusing.