I’ve lived out in the generally-liberal urban-ish West for most of my adult life now, and you get used to things, like people not smoking and Blue State votin’ and tolerance and stuff. It seems all progressive and good. I forget sometimes that with some people in some places, the last 40 years or so never happened, like with this asshole in Louisiana. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish's 8th Ward and possible slow adult, refused to issue a marriage license to a mixed-race couple because he was “concerned for the children who might be born of the relationship and that, in his experience, most interracial marriages don't last.”
What do you do with an ignorant dimwit like this? Well, you sue his ass for one, and shine a world spotlight on his racist bullshit. Sir, you can have your opinion all you like, but you are a PUBLIC SERVANT so SHUT YOUR DRAWLING INBRED DROOL MOUTH and do what you are PAID to do, which is to issue a marriage license to any qualified couple that asks for one. If you can’t do that, get another job where your stupidity is a bonus, like working at a Tyson plant plucking feathers from cancerous chicken carcasses, or host at Chuck E. Cheese.
Here in Seattle-ish, interracial couples are extremely common. It simply isn’t an issue. Cultural heritage is celebrated here in this cosmopolitan place, and I see strong benefits. I was raised in a 100% white environment; my kids get the benefit of going to school with kids whose parents came from India, Korea, Turkey, China, Iran, Peru, and Massachusetts, for that matter. There’s all kinds of skin colors and parental combos and backgrounds, and there is a mindfulness to understand and express where you come from in a positive way, which leads to the best outcome: people are treated, rightly so, like people instead of the other. Everybody works and plays and lives by everyone else. The divider I see here is income, but that’s another post.
GTFO, Mr. Bardwell. You embarrass your parish, your state, and your country.
Play us off, little Janis Ian.
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman