Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs: Louisiana Teaches Us Why Enforcement Matters
The story about a Justice of the Peace refusing a marriage license to an inter-racial couple is offensive for many reasons. First, the blatant racism is shocking. We all thought that decent Americans kept those feelings to themselves…
Second, gay couples get refused for marriage licenses all the time and the outrage across the country makes many of us feel like the story we’ve been selling for the past decade isn’t being heard.
But the point that I take away from it has nothing to do with marriage or gay rights.
Yesterday I posted a comment on the fact that the Civil Rights Department has pledged to start enforcing anti-discrimination legislation when it comes to LGBT Americans. And the key to that pledge is the understanding that, even if the laws are good, the enforcers of those laws might render them ineffective.
Well, here we see that played out in Louisiana.
This public servant is bound by a law that protects against racial discrimination. This law is actually quite old news. it’s not like we are in Iowa and the couple is a same-sex couple. But without the impetus to enforce the old accepted law, the fact that racial discrimination is not on the books doesn’t really matter.
This just reinforces the fact that winning hearts and minds in the struggle for equality is as essential as winning over lawmakers.
It shocks me to no end that this fellow still has his job. As far as I’m aware, there is no provision for a justice of the peace to decide not to issue a marriage license to a couple that is legally permitted to marry. So…why isn’t he looking for new employment? I’d recommend something that doesn’t require too much public contact and that also doesn’t require interpreting rules and regulations.
I do agree, incidentally that this incident may give us some assistance in our own struggle, though I’m not entirely convinced how many people will “get it.” I’ve little doubt that there are plenty of people out there who think that what this man did was perfectly legitimate.
Bill Maher said it best on his Friday night show on HBO.
After watching a clip of an interview with the justice of the peace in which he says: “I’m not a racist but… protect children bla bla bla” Bill said, and everyone agreed, that anytime someone prefaces an argument with “I’m not a xxxx but” it unequivocally means that they are what their trying to say their not. Replace the x’s with your choice of bigot. God knows that there are all too many to choose from.
I feel for the couple, but personally I think this news item will be good for our community. It opens the debate in a less threatening direction. The majority of folks accept interracial marriage. This JP is using the same arguments {protect the children, etc} to block this marriage that the religious right are using against our marriages. Maybe, just maybe the folks in Main, Washington, and Kalamazoo will see this as ridiculous and vote appropriately.
I absolutely agree with what you’re saying about winning over the hearts and minds is just as important in winning over lawmakers. It’s easy to lose track of reality sometimes and think that getting these laws in place will solve everything for us. It’s true, these laws will help immensely but not everyone is going to enforce those laws.
Everyone knows of corruption and disregard for laws from people in high, law-abiding postiions and that has been going on for years. So the core to gaining equality is, you are right, connecting with people and winning them over to see that everyone deserves equal rights without discrimination.
Just goes to show ya, bigotry is a lifestyle choice