Justice Keith Bardwell was forced into the spotlight in Hammond, LA last month when his wife, Beth Bardwell, informed Beth Humphrey, a white woman in south Louisiana, that her husband would not perform her marriage ceremony because her fiance was black. Although Beth and her new husband, Terence McKay, did end up getting married by another Justice of the Peace three days later, the damage had been done – the couple’s eyes had been opened to a pain all to familiar to interracial couples: the pain of rejection and disapproval. However, in this case, despite the strength and class exhibited by the McKays, the Justice would soon find the damage he had done to himself to be irreparable. News of the case traveled at the speed of light as Twitter and Facebook buzzed about the issue and the outrage spread like wildfire.

Beth and Terence McKay have done countless interviews and have undoubtedly been through an enormous amount of undue stress simply as a result of seeking out a Justice to validate their marriage under the law. As Bardwell came to his own defense, not issuing an apology or a justifiable response to the accusations, he admitted recusing himself from the duty of performing their ceremony based on his own personal prejudices toward interracial couples which he claimed stem from what he considers to be the widely acknowledged belief that children born into interracial marriages suffer as a result of their multicultural heritage and the inability of society to accept them. He went on to say that in his experience, interracial couples do not last and for those two reasons, he “didn’t want to do that to the children” born to these couples in the future.

Since the story initially broke – having blown up the news and social media alike causing a windstorm of controversy which peaked around the 15th of October – the Justice has officially resigned his position. In speaking to CNN affiliate WBRZ, he stated, “I needed to step down because they was going to take me to court, and I was going to lose. I would probably do the same thing again [ ... ] I found out I can’t be a justice of the peace and have a conscience.” Let’s just take a moment to examine the word “conscience” which is defined as being the moral sense, or that capacity of our mental constitution, by which we irresistibly feel the difference between right and wrong. Conscience is a part of our personal mental constitution. Apparently, the Justice failed to realize that HIS constitution has absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution that protects us ALL as individuals. The constitution of the United States is very clear and does not allow open interpretation in regards to IT’S views on marriages like that of the McKays which involve more than one ethnic background. The Supreme court ruled on this in 1967, stating:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. 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.

I am ecstatic that he resigned. However, I am appalled at the comment he made about there being a war between his position as justice of the peace and his position as a morally sound, ethically conscious individual. Does he REALLY think he was acting out of integrity? I have to say that it’s scary to admit to myself there are still people in this world who are in such strong opposition of interracial families to go as far a to break the LAW to prevent themselves from having to partake in “doing” such a disservice to the children involved. That’s IF I choose to entertain the notion that he was genuinely concerned for ‘the children,’ which I do not.

That’s just sick.

And it shows that we have such a long way to go, still…