Mississippi wedding venue rejects mixed-race couple 'because of our Christian race'
A wedding venue in Mississippi won’t let interracial marriages happen there because the owner’s ‘Christian race’ prohibits it.
The owners of a wedding venue in Mississippi are refusing to allow a mixed-race couple to get married there because mixed-race relationships conflict with their “Christian” values.
LaKambria Welch’s brother and his fiancee had spoken with Boone’s Camp Event Hall in Booneville, Mississippi, about getting married there. After about a week of discussion, the owner sent the couple a note saying they couldn’t get married there “because of (the venue’s) beliefs.”
Welch then drove to the venue to talk with someone who worked at the venue and filmed the encounter. In the video, the woman told Welch they didn’t do gay or mixed race weddings “because of our Christian race — I mean our Christian beliefs.”
That’s quite the slip of the tongue.
When pressed further, the woman declared “we just don’t participate” and “we just choose not to” allow mixed-race weddings.
Predictably, this caused a firestorm on social media. Boone’s Camp deleted their Facebook account, restored it to apologize, then deleted the entire account again. The “apology” explained that the administrator of the Facebook page had met with her pastor and learned, apparently for the first time, that the Bible doesn’t prohibit interracial marriage.
Unfortunately, you could have seen this coming from a mile away after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. There, the court ruled that Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission violated the First Amendment rights of a bigoted cake maker who didn’t want to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
It was never going to stop with LGBT couples or cake. If someone can declare their Christian faith prohibits them from baking a cake for a gay couple or photographing a lesbian couple or arranging flowers for a gay wedding, it’s just as easy to say their faith prohibits them from having anything to do with mixed-race marriage.
In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the court refused to grapple with the issue of race, limiting the case’s holding narrowly to the cakeshop owner’s refusal to make a cake for a gay wedding. But simply refusing to deal with it didn’t make it go away.
Bigots now need only say that it’s their faith that prohibits them from providing services or goods to a person of color, and it will be awfully hard, in light of the Masterpiece case, for a court to disagree. At a time when the Trump administration has emboldened white supremacists, expect to see more and more of this.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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