Today’s SF Chronicle reports the story of an interracial couple being denied a marriage license in Louisiana because a white justice of the peace says ‘it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long’. Clearly this man has never been to Hawaii.

The majority of people in the Aloha state self-describe as “mixed ancestry”, according to census records. The divorce rate is no higher than elsewhere, and is in fact a tad lower. (See related article on being fat and happy.)

The article goes on and Bardwell digs deeper:

‘I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,’ Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. ‘I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.’ Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Use his bathroom? Who is this guy? His reasoning:

‘There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.’

Maybe Bardwell hasn’t heard the latest news about a child of mixed race parents becoming President. But then again, that child was born in Hawaii.