Her Voice: Race at crux of marriage license case
Oct 28, 2009 | 642 views | 3 
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That a sworn-in justice of the peace can tell a black man and white woman he won’t marry them because they will have mixed-race kids is a story that one does not expect to hear in the year 2009.
A justice of the peace is a legal guardian of the law. But Bardwell officially refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple, citing as his reason the children the couple might have.
Bardwell was quoted as saying that, in his experience, “most interracial marriages do not last long,” they produce mixed kids who are not accepted by either black or white parts of society, and eventually the marriages meet a dead end.
He went on to defend himself by saying he was not a racist, just that he did not believe in “mixing races that way,” and that even though white himself, he has many black friends. He went on to say it was his policy never to marry a white-black couple.
He went on to support his arguments by citing that he had discussed the topic with blacks and whites, witnessed interracial marriages and concluded that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society.
“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer, and I won’t help put them through it.” In the same breath, he had the audacity to say, “I try to treat everyone equally.”
This story surfaced when Humphrey, 30, and 32-year-old Terence McKay, both of Hammond, La., were refused a license by the said justice of peace. The couple said they intended to consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.
According to Katie Schwartzmann, representative of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, which sent a letter to the state judiciary committee asking for an investigation into Bardwell, “It is really astonishing and disappointing to see this come up in 2009.”
She said that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967 “that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry.”
Bardwell continued to defend his action, however.
“I’ve been a justice of the peace for 34 years, and I don’t think I’ve mistreated anybody,” Bardwell said. “I’ve made some mistakes, but you have, too. I didn’t tell this couple they couldn’t get married. I just told them I wouldn’t do it.”
That right there is the question to ponder — is it the justice’s prerogative to deny a couple a marriage license based on his personal belief that whites should not marry blacks? Is that statement in and of itself not a crime of hate?
To say races should not be mixed sounds to me a statement a judicial spokesman should be forbidden to make. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is it stipulated that a man and woman can be denied the right to marry based on their heritage. Yet for a justice of the peace to make such brazen statements and pretend he is doing it out of the goodness of his heart compels one to question if he indeed deserves legal retribution.
In a day and age when for the first time in U.S. history a black man is president, to hear that a white woman and black man should not marry because their kids will be “ill received” is a slap in the face to American morals.
Perhaps it is a sad reminder that, even in this day and age, we suffer from bigotry regarding race, which the law put behind us many decades ago. The remnants of hatred for interracial marriages apparently abound in a country that stipulates equal rights for all.
We have come a long way from the time when black men and women could not ride in the front of a bus. But have we come long enough to hold dear to our hearts the child of a black and white union as neither a black child nor a white child, but an American child?
• Samina Masood is a four-year resident of Tracy and mother of two who has master’s degrees in both journalism and clinical psychology.
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Oh I'm sorry I fell a sleep reading this.
Somali women beaten for violating Islamic law, officials say
By Mohammed Amiin Adow, for CNN
October 29, 2009 6:45 p.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Militants who control parts of Somalia's capital city are beating women in broad daylight for violating their radical brand of Islamic law, according to local officials and witnesses in Mogadishu.
"Just today, Al-Shabaab dispatched men with whips to the streets around Bakara market and they are flogging any woman who is found not wearing socks," according to a female maize trader at the Mogadishu market, who spoke Thursday.
She did not want to be named for security reasons.
In the past two days, more than 130 people, including women who were not wearing headscarves and men chewing dried khat leaves, have been detained for violating Al-Shabaab's interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law, according to witnesses and officials.
Hooded Al-Shabaab gunmen rounded up 50 women on Wednesday from Mogadishu's Bakara market for not wearing the veil that is required for women under some interpretations of Islamic law, according to the maize trader.
"Most of these women were vegetable traders, so they are poor and can't afford to buy veils for 600,000 shillings [about $23 U.S.]," she said.
She said she saw more women being detained Thursday.
Another 80 Somali civilians were detained in the southwestern town of Luuq, near the Kenyan and Ethiopian border, "because they turned deaf ear to orders we imposed on the town," said the local Al-Shabaab commander Sheikh Hussien al-Iraqi.
Al-Shabaab is considered a terrorist organization by the United States because of its ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
It has been imposing stricter rules on Somali civilians living in the areas it controls.
Earlier this month, Al-Shabaab militants whipped women for wearing bras in an area of northern Mogadishu that they control, shocking residents who have been besieged by the ongoing insurgency. The militants believe the female undergarments are a deception to men.