Source: Associated Press
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.”
Is this 1965? Slippery slope indeed.
Hat Tip: G-A-Y (GoodAsYou.org)
In 1959-64 there was a push in LA, MS, GA to ban BLACK couples from marrying if they’d ever had children out of wedlock or co habited without being married.
Segregationists contended that Jim Crow be maintained as the statistical information citing low marriage rates and high out of wedlock rates indicated the lower morals and sexual aggression and irresponsibility of blacks.
This information was the only public information available.
This information comes from articles written by : Anders Walker.
Called “Legislating Virtue: How segregationists disguised racial discrimination as moral reform following Brown vs. Brd of Ed.”
Walker did extensive research on the paranoia of whites regarding black sexuality that dovetailed into public policy. Even ad hoc policies to address the decisions in the Supreme Court.
This is another parallel to the perception of ‘looser morals’ among blacks and gays that characterizes them as sexually immature and incapable of commitment, fidelity or competent parenting.
Anders Walker did extensive research.
And so did I when gathering background for my stage play.
Blacks and gays share similar defamation about their sexuality and it’s consequences.
So this ban on marriage isn’t just about mixed couples, but also as an extension of the animus that drives systemic and institutionalized bigotry and discrimination.
I wish black folks (and every one else who wants to foment anti gay discrimination )would do their damn homework before they complain as if gay folks have nothing in common with more than recent history!
Hey Regan, I wish you would write an article or something and get it published somewhere prominent…or maybe you know of someone who already has that you could direct everybody to, whenever you’re questioned about this topic? the parallels you draw between fear of black sexuality and fear of same-sex sexuality are bordering on eerie.
I especially see this as true in the gender dichotomy. Lesbians (or at least, sexual acts between women) are glorified as sexual objects for heterosexual men. And racist white men were certainly not above taking their female slaves as “exotic” sexual playthings.
Conversely, black men were constantly feared by those same individuals as obsessed with having sex with white women, to the point of rape. And it was feared women would get “jungle fever” and never touch a white man again should an encounter occur. Gay men are likewise feared by heterosexual men as being sexually aggressive to the point of forcing themselves on straights. And there seems to be this reoccurring consensus that one encounter (forced or otherwise) with a person of the same sex will cause the victim to turn gay.