Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa parish, said it was his experience that most interracial marriages did not last long.

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell said. “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.”

Bardwell said he asked everyone who called about marriage if they were a mixed race couple. If they were, he did not marry them.

Bardwell said he had discussed the topic with black and white people, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society did not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and nor did white society.

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

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

“I try to treat everyone equally.”

Bardwell estimates that he has refused to marry about four couples during his career.

Beth Humphrey, 30, and Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond, said they would consult the US justice department about a discrimination complaint.

Humphrey, an account manager for a marketing firm, said she and McKay, a welder, had just returned to Louisiana. She is white and he is black. She plans to enrol in the University of New Orleans to pursue a masters degree in minority politics.

“That was one thing that made this so unbelievable,” she said. “It’s not something you expect in this day and age.”

Humphrey said that when she called Bardwell on 6 October to inquire about getting a marriage licence signed his wife told her he would not sign marriage licences for interracial couples. Bardwell suggested the couple go to another justice of the peace in the parish who agreed to marry them.

“We are looking forward to having children,” Humphrey said. “And all our friends and co-workers have been very supportive. Except for this, we’re typical happy newlyweds.”

Katie Schwartzmann, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, said it was “really astonishing and disappointing” to see such a case in 2009. “The supreme court ruled as far back as 1963 that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry.”

The ACLU has asked the Louisiana judiciary committee, which oversees state justices of the peace, to investigate Bardwell and recommended “the most severe sanctions available, because such blatant bigotry poses a substantial threat of serious harm to the administration of justice”.

“He knew he was breaking the law, but continued to do it,” Schwartzmann said.

Bardwell said: “I’ve been a justice of the peace for 34 years and I don’t think I’ve mistreated anybody. I’ve made some mistakes, but you have to. I didn’t tell this couple they couldn’t get married. I just told them I wouldn’t do it.”

via US mixed race couple denied marriage licence | World news | guardian.co.uk.

This is just another way to slip religion into schools.

via YouTube – Texas required to teach Bible in schools.

via YouTube – Palin – Abortion Clinic Bombers Aren’t Terrorists.

Why should right wing pranksters be the only ones who crash offices with partisan prostitution tax questions? At least these are about a real prostitute. Go ahead, give him a call.Now me, I don’t care who sleeps with our politicians.Honestly, I couldn’t care less. If it calms them down enough to make some decent policy decisions, let ‘em sleep with all the prostitutes they want. Hell, let’s get them some government sponsored prostitutes. Why not? Let’s subsidize sex workers to soothe the raging libidos of our wildly oversexed legislators. At last, a stimulus package the Senate can get behind. We can call it the “pubic option.”But hypocrisy is a special kind of gall. If Senator Vitter is so outraged by the ACORN prostitution scandal, surely he doesn’t mind talking about his own.

This is the brand new ad from the Yes on 1 campaign in Maine:

And, this is a Prop 8 ad from last fall in California:

The same consultants behind Prop 8 were hired for exactly this, drive up fear about marriage equality using lies about kids and churches. It goes without saying that Maine does not force school to talk about marriage equality, in fact they don’t have to talk about marriage at all. Dirigo Blue got a comment from the Maine Department of Education Comunications Director David Connerty-Marin:

I cannot comment on Massachusetts education law or decisions made by local school districts in Massachusetts. Here in Maine, our Learning Results standards and education regulations make no reference to the teaching of marriage in any way. So a change in Maine’s laws or definition of marriage places no requirements on local districts regarding whether or how they teach about marriage. Such curriculum decisions are strictly local. Before or after passage of the gay marriage law a district could choose to teach about marriage or not, and to teach about it in any way it deemed appropriate. It simply is not governed by state education law.

But Schubert/Flint seems to be phoning it in a bit. They don’t seem to realize what a far right wacko they picked to be in their ad.

Charla Bansley is a high school teacher at a private Christian school, not an elementary public school teacher as they are implying in the ad. And the leader of the Maine Chapter of Concerned Women of America, which is a hard-right nut-job org (anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-religion in schools, anti-porn, and anti-UN, yes they hate the United Nations). And she is a teabagger. And tried to get a student expelled for writing a pro-marriage equality letter to the editor as part of a class project.

And she thinks gays are psychotic and deviants. From a speech she gave at a Stand for Marriage Maine rally recently. Louise has much more over at the Blend.

Public display of psychosis and we have dealt with it by redefining decency down so as to explain away and make normal what a more civilized, and ordered, and healthy society would label deviant and the result has been a stunning failure.

This woman is a walking opportunity for opposition research and should be fodder for a while. Her values are not Maine values.

Fight back against this nasty. Fight back against fundie lies. Fight for love and marriage.

Give till it hurts, because if they win, there will be pain for Maine LGBT families.

http://crooksandliars.com/julia-rosen/recycled-lies-yes-1-campaign-maine

Why is this on Stop The American Taliban?

Erik Prince, Founder and Owner of Blackwater, has been quoted as saying that he went to Iraq in order to (paraphrasing): “Rid the world of Muslims to allow the Christian faith to rise”  He thinks of himself as a Holy Warrior For God.  Yeah, Erik Prince just might be a member of The American Taliban.  Check out Jeremy’s book.

In this video Bill interviews Jeremy Scahill author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Government Bake Sale!

Wouldn’t be an interesting day when billions of dollars go the education of our country, and the government has to have a bake sale to pay for war?

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