Miscegenation is an interesting word in the English language which received much attention yesterday when a Justice of the Peace in Louisiana refused to marry a black and white couple. This is 2009, isn't it? No doubt Keith Bardwell, of Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana is a Bible-thumper, perhaps his favorite passage being Phinehas.
There exists an amorphous group of 'believers' here in the United States referred to as The Phineas Priesthood. The 'fellowship' is named for the Israelite Phinehas, grandson of Aaron. According to Numbers 25, Phineas personally executed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman while they were in the doorway of the Tent of Meeting, running a spear through the two and ending a plague said to have been sent by God to punish the Israelites for sexually intermingling with the Midianites.
Wikipedia reports that the The Phineas Priesthood (Phineas Priests) is a Christian Identity movement that opposes interracial intercourse, the mixing of races, homosexuality, and abortion. It is also marked by its anti-Semitism, anti-multiculturalism, and opposition to taxation. Wow! Sounds like the Republican Party.
In fact, it sounds like the South. The map at the top represents the date at which a state rescinded Miscegenation laws; the red color represents 1967 when it became a Federal Law. Had that law not been enacted, one wonders if, today, some of those southern states might still have miscegenation laws in force.
The Bible Belt and the Miscegenation Belt. Quite the cozy relationship. For the Bible says...
In 1945, Germany was forced to nullify its Nuremberg Laws, the Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre (The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour). It was enacted in 1935 as anti-Semitic propaganda. Yet, those same laws continued here in the land of the free and the home of the brave for 22 more years. Biblical mandate, you know.
How many more racial bigots, assured by the Bible that it is righteous, go about their daily lives 'believing' that biblical law, the Law of Moses, supersedes the laws of the United States Constitution? I am afraid that there are more than we ever imagined.
