On October 8th, a Louisiana justice of the peace, Keith Bardwell,  refused to marry a couple in Tangipahoa Parish, due to the fact that they were an interracial couple. Just this Tuesday, Bardwell resigned after weeks of refusing to step down despite calls for his dismissal from officials including the governor.

Bardwell reported to a local Louisiana newspaper, “I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way. 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.” Hmmm….the state of denial is a sad thing. He went on to explain that he refused to marry the couple based on his belief that the children born to such couples will end up suffering. Wow.

Terrance McKay, who was denied the marriage license with his fiancé, Beth Humphrey, said “It was disheartening. Seriously, you know, it’s 2009, and we’re still dealing with a form of racism.” It takes something like this to remind us just how far we have yet to come.

The U.S. Supreme Court tossed out any racially based limitations on marriage in the landmark 1967 Loving v. Virginia case. In the unanimous decision, the court said that “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the state.”

Bardwell is now under fire from the NAACP and facing possible legal action. ”He’s an elected public official and one of his duties is to marry people. He doesn’t have the right to say he doesn’t believe in it,” Patricia Morris, president of the NAACP branch of Tangipahoa Parish told CNN.

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