Wow. I almost can’t believe it. In Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, a couple has been denied a marriage license because they are an interracial couple. I thought that peculiar brand of regulating love was declared unconstitutional with Loving v. Virginia.

This incident is more evidence of an increasingly less “post-racial” society and a sad testament to the unwillingness of some people to grow. We are human beings, less defined by any biological “racial categories” than our own ideas about them. While it is easy to dismiss the bigoted comments of Keith Bardwell–the justice of the peace who denied the license–as idiotic, antiquated, and racist, it is also an opportunity to remember that public officials often make decisions in their professional capacity that reflect their individual biases.

“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell is quoted as saying. “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”

“The children” have often been the scapegoat for a racist frame around love, but as the wife of a biracial man, having grown up with a biracial best friend and several bi- and multi-racial friends in the diverse San Francisco Bay Area, I can tell you that “the children” are just as well adjusted as any of us are in a racially-stratefied society filled with people who think and act like Bardwell. Those in their right mind understand that love has no race…people barely have one.

Stop hating, Bardwell, and practice the justice mandated by federal law, not that of your narrow, personal perspective.

Copyright 2009 Monique W. Morris

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