ne Kjast
Forget Same-Sex Marriage, it seems a lot of
Southern USA Evangelicals are still trying to grasp interracial
marriage. With world-wide trends towards
marriage indicating that it is a social institution in general decline – no
longer seen as essential for raising children or living in a committed
relationship – potentially outmoded concepts of marriage might seemingly outlive
marriage itself.
South Africa and the United States South, two
of the world’s most racially controversial societies in the 20th
Century, are again generating racial headlines.
It seems that certain ghosts of the past still haunt feelings of trust
and acceptance between racial groups in these two regions.
Last December (2011), despite decades of
civil rights movements and legislation against racial discrimination, the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church in
Kentucky voted 9 to 6 to bar interracial
couples from becoming members or being used in worship services. After a week of bad press, the church did
reverse itself, but the damage was done.
Huffington Post writer Melanie Coffee sums it up by asking, “So between you and me, how do you really feel about interracial
couples? Are you OK with it as long as: A) It's not one of your children? B)
It's not in your church C) They're not gay or D) The couple's happy?”
(Coffee, see below).
