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Next Thing You Know, the Gays Will Want To Be Doing It
Thursday, October 15th, 2009Um. Holy crap.
What year is this?
60 Responses to “Next Thing You Know, the Gays Will Want To Be Doing It”
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He’s not racist, he just doesn’t think black people are good enough to marry white people. And vice versa?
How does a judge get away with this for any length of time?
Although my gut reaction was this story is made up, it appears to be legit. Let the white southern bashing begin.
Go easy on him, he was just thinking of the children.
He does say that he’s doing it for the children!
So, uh, he shouldn’t have a problem with signing the license for a same-sex couple, right?
I don’t remember Loving v. Virginia addressing “the children.” Maybe the supremes will review their decision.
Probably not – this is ridiculous. People manage to have kids outside of marriage.
As a Louisiana native, I must admit to being thoroughly unsurprised.
We’re pissed because one guy refuses to grant one license? Jesus fuckin’ Christ. The outrage should be over the fact that we have to get the government’s permission to get married in the first place.
Remember that TV commercial that played during the 1984 Super Bowl? It presented a dreary black and white portrayal of a population of expressionless lobotomized automatons, dressed in dull gray work clothes, marching in lock-step as the Hitleresque voice of their lord and master spews forth state propaganda from ubiquitous loudspeakers in front of a massive screen filled with the cold powerful face of absolute authority.
Remember that? Well, we’re the lobotomized automatons.
Oh, and forget about the beautiful athletic blond heroine who throws the giant hammer, breaking the big screen and freeing the masses from the iron grip of their slave master. She doesn’t exist (and the goddamn automatons wouldn’t deserve her if she did).
That’s your reaction upon reading that story?
To play the victim card . . . for southern whites?
I’m with Dave that the government shouldn’t even be licensing marriage to begin with. It’s easier to mitigate institutionalized racism by removing the institution than via thought policing.
Also, my dad owned one of those macs. And I was depressed for a month after reading 1984. And I feel sorry for people who have never experienced jungle fever. What the fuck were we talking about again?
I’m only going to say this: Apples super bowl commercial introducing the mac has got to be the worst metaphor for the false outrage against licensing of marriage.
Paula Poundstone admonishing an audience member (who had just self-identified as from La, and miscounted the number of people in her own party): “Oh, so I see you can count as well as they say.”
Gawwwd. #6 Josh, no offense, obviously some there aren’t total trog redneck asswipes. After all, I’m from Oklahoma (i.e, and generally not a TTRAW), where the jaw-dropping news items tend to revolve more around Jesus and Homo Stuff than Racism Stuff.
I’m of the same opinion that the government should be out of the marriage business. I got the belief from a rather unusual source.
In the late 70′s in my catechism class my pastor explaining how the government should have nothing to do with marriage since it was a sacrament between God and two people and not God, two people and the government. This was at a Luthern Church in west texas and the pastor was probably in his 60′s.
That has always stuck with me.
Lee–
Correct. Absolutely correct.
So now when I say that I got kicked out of a ph.d. program in Louisiana supposedly because I’m Jewish and the dean and a prof supposedly emailed each other about how to do it, people will no longer look at me like an alien? Cool.
So is it wrong to assume that if this judge is so outspoken about this to the Associated Press that this is a relatively common practice in LA?
“It is really astonishing and disappointing to see this come up in 2009,” said American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana attorney Katie Schwartzman. “The Supreme Court ruled as far back as 1963 that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry.”
Right, Katie. That’s why I’m marrying my 12-year-old sister.
That’s your reaction upon reading that story?
To play the victim card . . . for southern whites?
Why the fuck not? Wasn’t a white person equally hurt here?
Do you even know the ethnicity of the judge? Or are you just assuming?
#12 Lee: As an anarchist Discordian minister, this is precisely how I feel about it. How dare the government presume to interfere with my performance of religious sacraments?
#17, the judge is white.
Well, at least it was “for the children”…cough.
Anyways, a marriage license is not a license to love. It is a license to take on all her damn student loans and spend the rest of your life paying them off. Imeanwhat?
mind… boggled… speechless.
Obviously the children of interracial marriages are doomed to be social outcasts who will never achieve anything. I mean it’s not as if any of then could ever go on to be President or something – probably not even a good golf player.
I especially like the part where he says
“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.”
Dude, you live in Louisiana, try talking to someone other than guy next to you at the country club. Heck, come out to California, where interracial marriages are a dime a dozen and no one regards them, or their offspring, as anything unusual.
The question I would ask, is … Why, in our society, that both the black and white races look down on the beautiful interracial kids, that are often produced by such a union? The kids are not to blame, anyway! Nothing more fun that persecuting the innocent!
The churches I attended had long lasting interracial couple among the congregations. The judge’s claim, of the marriages not lasting, is pure ignorance. Obviously, the judge is more knowledgeable than most of us! But, it is more likely the other things in life that ruin marriages also affect interracial couples. I am sure they get enough grief from all the busy-bodies, too. This judge needs to do the job he was instructed to do and butt out. If he can’t, he needs to seek other employment!
The “I’ve never seen good X” is a favorite argument among people with massive prejudice trying to rationalize it: such as “I’ve never seen a pagan that has their life together.” Or “I’ve never known a gay couple not to cheat on each other.” Or “I’ve never seen a good sports team come out of Chicago.”
I say we spit on the children of Louisiana Judges until none of them can get married, ever.
If your train of logic goes “Biracial kids are discriminated against. = Biracial children should cease to exist. Stop looking at me like that, I’m not a racist!” that sucker derailed at the station. When I first saw this headline somewhere I clicked it thinking “Please don’t be my state. Please don’t be my state…”
I thought it was 2009. Maybe like in Vonnegut’s Timequake, we all got thrown back in time. I just hope it’s not the 1980s…oh Jesus Mary Mother of God, is that that homunculus Rick Astley? NOOOO!
The outrage should be over the fact that we have to get the government’s permission to get married in the first place.
QFT. Tip o’ the hat, Dave.
Not to take away from anyone’s outrage (I share it!), I have to point out that a justice of the peace is NOT a judge.
The JP is a locally elected office, who doesn’t hear criminal cases.
I’m with Parse… marriage between siblings seems…. icky.
Hold on, I thought we were discriminating against the homos…did I miss a meeting? Blako, or anyone, can you forward me the field guide on our discrimination policy, apparently management in the Philadelphia office is not keeping us up to speed.
#7 @Dave: Huh?
#19 @RGD: Let’s not be so quick to dismiss the Chicago one…
paul, my comment wasn’t meant to highlight the ickyness of incestuous marriages, but to highlight the fact that I can’t understand if, according to this ACLU attorney, the Supreme Court ruled 45 years ago that the government cannot tell people who they can marry how laws restricting marriage between siblings or by children could be Constitutional. Something tells me that Schwartzman is being a little sloppy in her description of high court rulings.
In NY, you can legally marry your 14 year old first cousin (of the opposite sex) provided their guardians/parents give consent.
But you still can’t marry a person of your own gender.
I agree with those above who say the government shouldn’t be involved at all.
@perlhaqr, from http://www.krqe.com:
Not that there was much chance of it being otherwise…
Black’s Law Dictionary defines a marriage license as permission to INTERMARRY.
???
Why do two people of the same race need one at all?
Lol. I love that people are still confused about this. The government has no say whether you can or can’t get married in the eyes of your church. The government also has no say as to whether or not a particular church will marry you. There are people that get turned away from churches, synagogues, temples, etc all the time because they don’t meet the criteria for the religious marriage ceremony. I could go into Church tomorrow with my potential bride and get married , and in the eyes of god I would be married. However when it comes to the state marriage, it means nothing unless I do the civil part (contract), which is separate. Of course Americans are lazy so we’ve allowed the two to blend together in one ceremony, and people don’t realize that State Marriage and Religious Marriage really aren’t the same thing.
Marriage as it exists in terms of the State is an special version of contract law where a lot of things you’d normally have to do with thousands upon thousands of pages of legal documents all get covered by one document. (Go ask a gay couple all the paperwork they have to do to approximate what state “marriage” achieves with one slip of paper).
It’s a “marriage license”, but the reality is it’s a contract governed by state law. It has no bearing whatsoever on the religious marriage in any way shape or form.
If people could finally get this point through their heads, we might actually be able to resolve the whole same sex marriage thing, but I’m not planning on holding my breath.
Edmund,
I doubt very many church officials would dare to perform a church wedding without a license from the state.
After all they are a licensed 501c3 licensed church.
Licensing is just one way government rewards friends and punishes those who resist social and religious mandates. Most of them serve little or no purpose beyond that. A license just grants you privileges that government probably has no business controlling to begin with.
They certainly don’t control who’s fucking whom or who’s living with whom, whether it be your horse, your same sex lover, or your sister.
This JOP is simply doing something that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow a mere 50 or 75 years ago. He just hasn’t kept pace with his brethren on who the current targets of persecution are.
#21 | Cornellian:
Bravo, well done!
If you are asking to be legally married then yes they would refuse you without a license, but if you are asking to get spiritually married there is nothing that involves the state or interest the state unless the Pastor was telling people that getting married this entitles them to all the “legal” benefits of marriage. Pastors do it all the time while having the people involved acknowledging they aren’t married “legally”, but they are still married in the eyes of God. There are plenty of gay couples married this way by more enlightened congregations. There are tons of other couples married this way.
Again, the United States has allowed these two separate entities to be blended together. Some did it because they wanted government to control religion, and some did it because they wanted religion to control government. However it doesn’t change the fact that spiritual marriage has nothing to do with legal marriage.
…where you’re locked in for life, but they get to change the rules at will. Where they force everyone else in the country to provide special favors to those in state approved personal relationships that meet politically defined requirements.
Like all licensing, it’s commonly portrayed as government doing citizens a favor. It doesn’t do anyone any favors. It simply mandates that one group of people (in this case, employers, insurance companies, state agencies, landlords, etc) to provide special benefits to another. As some business entities have already proven, those benefits can be readily provided on a voluntary basis without so much as a ripple.
While I have been in an interacial marriage for over 7 years now, I found this story to be pretty hilarious, mainly because of this priceless quote:
“I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom.
Sorry, that’s comedy gold right there. :D (It helps I also believe the best response to such incidents is ridicule rather than outrage).
Edmund,
You forgot the other “reason” the state got involved in the marriage license business.
Back in day, the daddy of the unwed mothers child was required to post a Bastardly Bond. A “marriage license” assumes the male is in fact the father of the children unless it was contested. That’s another nightmare with roots in “Common Law” that’s still screwing men. The states whole reason was not to be burdened with the cost of raising the child.
Marriage itself is strictly a religious ceremony, between god and the couple. A marriage license is a contract.
Science can now confirm who the father is. The states reason for being in the marriage business serves no purpose except control.
I believe a better choice would be a “domestic contract” between adults. It would define what is joint and personal property, and with a very limited exception of children, the rest is none of the states business.
just design your own legal relationship. it’s simple to sign power of attorneys to give people who are important to you power over your affairs. plus, it eliminates the icky ‘my significant other’s in a coma and they won’t let me back there because I’m not family…’ Any adult can legally change their name to whatever they want… This works for any adult relationship. Why anyone would need their relationship sanctioned by some incompetent govt prick is beyond me…
#42 Gerald:
Well put.
But he did it for the children! I can’t believe you cold-blooded evil bastards want to hurt children!
Sorry folks, but I don’t see a marriage license as a contract. A license is issued for something that the state has defined as a privilege instead of a right. It’s a control mechanism. Although commonly sold as such, it’s not a legitimate contract by any stretch of the imagination.
A contract is a voluntary agreement between parties. The marriage “contract”, as is commonly executed, is not a written document and the parties to it are not only often ignorant of the terms, but weren’t even involved in their definition. Furthermore, the term of the contract is for life and the rules can be changed by the state without involving the participants or even notifying them of the changes. If both parties voluntarily decide to end the contract, they have to follow state rules and get permission from the state first.
The final insult is that most people are led into this so-called contract at a very young age when their judgment is clouded by the emotions and excitement of love.
In other words, the state steers the country’s youth into an agreement that, under any other circumstances, would be considered an extremely fraudulent, costly, and destructive scam, at a time when they’re most vulnerable.
Please note, when I say “the state” I’m referring to our friends and neighbors (ie: our fellow automatons). State sanctioned marriage has no place in a modern society. It was invented for a purpose that no longer exists in a state that can honestly refer to itself as “free”.
Oops. I forgot to mention that the terms of the marriage “contract” differ depending upon where you live at the moment, since each state is different.
If marriage were invented today, everyone would see immediately that it’s simply a way of lining the pockets of lawyers.
Marriage is a legal contract that merges asserts and responsibilities between two (or more) people. I have no problem with registering that contract with the government anymore than I have a problem with business incorporation being registered witht the government.
Well, I would certainly agree that business incorporation is just as much of a contract as marriage.
Radley, I have to agree with Z (#2) on this – first thing I thought of was “damn, yet another idiot to use as ‘proof’ of the stereotype.” Being a Southerner, especially one from Alabama, I get comments when I mention where I’m from – people automatically assume that I’m 1) a ultra right wing conservative, 2) fundamentalist christian, and 3) racist. Yeah, I know there are a good number of white Southerners out there that are opposed to interracial marriage, but there are many more that have no issue with it.
I just hate it when things like this pop up and are then used to stereotype people from the South….
My problem with this article is everyone is getting pissed off at the first sentence, instead of the second,
“Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.”
That to me seems far worse than the first sentence, which is him saying “Everyone down here is racist as hell, and mixed-race kids are gonna be treated horribly.”
I’m with Dave that the government shouldn’t even be licensing marriage to begin with. It’s easier to mitigate institutionalized racism by removing the institution than via thought policing.
You can sleep with anyone you want, you can marry anyone you want in a Church (well, whoever the Church will allow), you can have kids with whoever you want. Government only comes in if you want the artificially created legal options government-recognized marriage bestows. If you don’t want something from the government, then they don’t care.
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“I just hate it when things like this pop up and are then used to stereotype people from the South….”
Agreed but they’re stereotypes for a reason. I grew up in Oklahoma and there were 2 black people in my high school, one of which was elected as our class president and prom king in ’87.
As enlightened and progressive as the students were, the rules were changed by the board of education to “no kissing” between the prom king & queen at homecoming because our prom queen was white.
And all of the students weren’t really so enlightened either, as I found when I started dating a black boy from a neighboring town and had to defend myself from both physical and verbal attacks by my fellow students for being a ‘nigger lover’.
The lesson I took from it all was that southerners know racism is bad, so many have just decided to hide it as much as they can and even though races *might* be equal in the eyes of the law, they should certainly be kept separate as much as possible.
I fought the racism and shouted down lots of rednecks in defense of equality, but when push came to shove and I gave birth to my “inter-racial” daughter, I moved and got her the hell out of the south because like it or not, that judge was at least partially right. For the time, anyway.
I couldn’t tell you how much things have changed in the last 15 years. Evidently not much and I don’t think they will change much more until the older generations die off. The South: where racists hide their light under a bushel – but it’s still there.
As stated above, I hate that the styreotype of all southerners being racist. A lot of southerners are, I won’t deny that. But I have met racist from every corner of the country. The most racist white person I have ever met is from Clark, New Jersey. The most racist person in general that I have met was an Asian girl from L.A.
Sometimes I feel like non southerners keep perpetuating this idea that dixie has the most bigots so they don’t feel as bad for their own prejudices.
Edmund Dantes,
In Texas pastors can be prosecuted for performing a wedding without a license.
Lee #55, is that constitutional?
As a couple others have already commented – yet another reason to get the State out of the marriage business. And as I’ll continue (and our Agorist buds will support) – yet another reason to put the State out of business.
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I’m a middle-aged white male in a southern state who has been married to a black lady for 20 years. If some judge doesn’t like it, he can kiss my ass.
He lets them use his bathroom. They still gotta drink outta the garden hose tho.