<p>…Seems we take two steps forward and go three steps backward…</p>
<p>[Today’s</a> Wake-up Call: JP won’t sign license for interracial couples - On Deadline - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/10/louisiana-jp-refuses-to-issue-marriage-license-for-interracial-couples-.html]Today’s”>http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/10/louisiana-jp-refuses-to-issue-marriage-license-for-interracial-couples-.html)</p>
<p>WOW. Just wow.</p>
<p>I don’t find this shocking at all. It takes all kinds. There are plenty of Rabbis who won’t marry interfaith couples, and probably plenty of ministers that follow similar practices. Reminds me of the pharmacist who won’t fill BC prescription.</p>
<p>A religious person is free to discriminate, but a justice of the peace is not.</p>
<p>Quote:“my main concern is for the children”.</p>
<p>Boy, that line has covered up a multitude of sins in the last hundred years.</p>
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<p>My thoughts exactly.</p>
<p>Maybe he was trying to make into onto the Daily Show or to be featured in an SNL sketch.</p>
<p>NJRes–that is not the same thing at all.</p>
<p>A JP is paid by the state and is supposed to marry any 2 people who can legally marry in his state and show up with a license & blood test results.</p>
<p>A minister/rabbi is not expected to marry people who dont follow their religious leanings. </p>
<p>And you can convert to a new religion but you can’t change the color of your skin.</p>
<p>I wonder how dark a person would have to be before the JP “worried about the children”??? </p>
<p>This really gets me hot under the collar.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure this sounds illegal, and, if not, it should be.</p>
<p>that was really shocking- I also think it is shocking for a pharmacist to refuse to dispense legally prescribed medication on the basis of his religious beliefs.
That apparently is legal, even if there are no other providers.</p>
<p>As long as people will fund and support him financially, he will keep doing thsi bigotry and nonsense. They need to sue this guy.</p>
<p>Suing him is fine, but meanwhile, he should be fired. He is apparently not able to carry out the duties of his office.</p>
<p>
I’ve heard - and I apologize in advance if i’m wrong, as I’m not a doctor - but physicians aren’t required to perform abortions if they don’t want to, so I imagine a similar rule exists for pharmacists, when it comes to things like the abortion pill. It makes sense to me.</p>
<p>my favorite part was in the comments section, when one of the posters declared interracial marriage was wrong, because it says so in the bible - provided a quote, too. It’s weird to think there are people like this out there…as a young person who grew up in the most liberal part of the country, it’s always suprising to hear.</p>
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<p>Um…Yeah, you are.</p>
<p>How did he get away with this for 34 years? Anyway, I really don’t care what this guy believes on his own time, but this is just plain illegal. Also, I love how he hides behind “the children” and how “in his experience, these things just don’t work out.” 50% (probably more now) of marriages period “just don’t work out”, bud. So why be a JP at all?</p>
<p>This guy will get zapped within days, if he hasn’t already. He’ll be lucky if he gets to resign. This would be like a fire department refusing to go to the house of an interracial couple. I suspect he got away with it so long because nobody ever complained before.</p>
<p>I liked the quote from one article I read, “Maybe he’s afraid they’ll grow up to be president?”</p>
<p>The White House weighed in today, someone asked at the daily press gaggle what the President thought about this. </p>
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<p>Hunt, you would think they would kick this guy out, but this is Louisiana… I don’t think anything will be done unless some federal entity like the Justice Department can take action.</p>
<p>In my town, this story is inside the paper while the balloon boy’s (who was never in harm’s way, afterall) is on the front page. Ridiculous.</p>
<p>Jindal is calling for him to be fired.</p>
<p>A J.P. is a judicial officer and hence his actions constitute “state action”. The policy is violative of the U.S. Constitution as well as of a variety of federal civil rights statutes and, I would bet, of the state constitution and civil rights laws. If anyone presses it, his days as a J.P. are numbered.</p>