“Look, when people want to get married, we ought to let them get married”
This courageous quote comes courtesy of Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant. Being the governor of Mississippi, one might guess that Bryant is white, male, in his late 50s, and very conservative. As these are predominantly the prerequisites for the job (aside from the Ronnie Musgrove interlude) of the past two decades, no bonus points are awarded for a correct guess.
Before cognitive dissonance ensues, Bryant isn’t taking a political stand unpalatable to an electorate which voted 86% in 2004 to amend the state constitution limiting marriage to opposite sex couples. Rather, he’s attempting to drag Mississippi, at least the First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs, Mississippi, boldly into a future where a predominantly white Baptist congregation will allow the wedding of a black Baptist couple (also congregation members) to simply happen in the church. Of course, those who pressured the pastor into notifying the couple that their wedding was off with 24 hours notice are characterised as a “small minority” of the congregation, that while this action is clearly unfortunate, “(we) have been portrayed as a racist church, we’re not!”.
I doubt it was a small minority of the congregation. The way the story is told by the groom, the pastor was threatened with being voted out of the congregation if he allowed the wedding to go forward. While even the pastor characterises the opposition to be a “small minority”:
The church’s pastor, Dr. Stan Weatherford, says he was taken by surprise by what he calls a small minority against the black marriage at the church. ”This had never been done before here, so it was setting a new precedent, and there are those who reacted to that because of that,” said Weatherford.
They clearly must have been large or influential enough for Weatherford to notify the couple a day before the wedding that it wasn’t going to fly. Furthermore, the groom has also pointed out that he has encountered what a local reporter calls “mixed reactions” once this story went public.
I’ll let the trail-blazing Governor have the final word:
“We have enough people that won’t go and get married. I want to make every opportunity I can for any couple that wants to, to go get married.” But when asked if that should include couples where both partners are of the same sex, he added: “I wouldn’t say gay couples, no,” Bryant said. “I’d say a man and a woman. Let me make sure, let’s get that right. When I say couples, I automatically assume it’s a man and a woman.”
Oh, it’s a slippery slope. First African-American mixed-sex couples, then same-sex couples, then walruses and lesbians. Clearly, we need a sandwich from Chick-Fil-A.
The frightening aspect of this is that is actually a major step forward for the governor of Mississippi to actually come out and say this publicly and not make excuses for the blatant racism.
I don’t get it. What’s wrong with a couple marrying? Do you still believe in slavery?
Are you a bigot? Do you still think women are second-class citizens.
I heard in Mississippi, the bohunks like to beat them and rape them. They are closing the abortion clinic because it’s run by blacks and because they want those uppity women they abuse to pay for the rest of their lives.
And you want some friend chicken sandwich to increase your cholesterol. You must like raw and bloodied chicken, Buster.
I see you failed the satire appreciation class.
When I say couples, I automatically assume it’s a man and a woman.
I wonder if he automatically assumes they are both of the same race.
I think you may be missing the governor’s main point, gays aren’t ‘people’ in Mississippi.
It was hard for me to understand, when I saw this story, why there would be any problem with two members of the congregation getting married at the church. You’d think that the battle over integration would have been fought and won or lost at the time they integrated the congregation. But of course, silly me, to expect these people to make sense.
My understanding is that although the couple had been attending the church, they were not officially members of the congregation. I’m not sure I grasp what the distinction is, though.
My guess is they show up to services and events but don’t pony up money in tithing or put themselves on the mailing lists (when they need to mobilize voters for Creationism in schools and mandatory Lord’s Prayer in courtrooms)
There is a very big distinction between attending a Church and being a member. Most churches let anyone walk into the door, but you have to affirm your faith (and anything else the Church requires you too…) during a service to become a member.
Not a lot of churches require you to pay a tithe, but then again I go to a Methodist church which is extremely lax. Are there any black members of the Church I wonder?
Check out the comments on the newpaper’s website…just a wealth of Christian love and acceptance
Which one? There are links to like five discrete articles up there.
Hell, wasn’t even a newspaper
http://www.wlbt.com/story/19125864/black-wedding-banned-by-baptist-church
Sorry, should have been more specific
As far as I can tell from the comments, they giving the Wilsons the Trayvon treatment.. card thieves, suing people for a living, etc.
But again this is Mississippi, which along with Alabama and South Carolina, bless their hearts, seem to have a large amount of people that pride themselves in their pettiness and the meaness of their hearts.
Don’t forget calling themselves Christians afterwards
Don’t forget calling themselves Christians afterwards
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, essay I, passim.
If you ever deal with the interface between the clergy and the congregation at pretty much any church/synagogue/meeting house, whatever, it is in fact a “small minority” of members/parishioners who serve in the administrative roles. In some places, its called Vestry and Wardens, in others simply “the board”, or trustees, or the committee, or whatever, but it usually is a group with outsized influence, because they give huge amounts of time and/or money.
Sometimes they are benign, and really do good work. Sometimes, not so much.
This is true; a small number of members could represent a lot of influence, and a lot of dollars in financial support.
As a church member in North Carolina, I found this story disappointing but not shocking. I’ve seen situations where bigoted attitudes pop up unexpectedly when a church was trying to break new ground, so to speak. Despite religious ideals, churches are private institutions, not subject to anti-discrimination law. Churches carry a lot of intimate emotional weight for members, and when it comes to racial tolerance, churches tend to lag behind schools and workplaces.
“No shit,” you might say, and I’m not excusing their behavior, but I can imagine white Mississippians being cordial to African-Americans at school, work, etc., but having an irrational reaction against hosting a wedding party for African-American families in their almost-all-white church.
There are nuances to the conflict that we’ll never know, but it sure looks to me like the minister should have stood up more strongly to members’ objections. For every leader, there’s a time when you ought to risk being fired or other bad consequences over a matter of conscience. It seems likely that the minister was surprised by the negative reactions, and failed to prepare or give people the heads-up that this was taking place. (The change of venue happened just a couple of days ahead of the wedding date.)
If he DID give everyone “fair warning” and the protest came at the 11th hour, then the preacher definitely should have told the unhappy members that this is going to happen, and if you don’t like it, tough.
In the minister’s partial defense, the couple’s wedding day is supposed to be joyous, and it was shaping up to be a day of anger and controversy. Moving the ceremony probably looked to him like the least-bad option.
The incredible thing with this story is just how retrograde these people are. Think of it this way:
21st century: we should respect the right of Gay couples to solemnize their union
20th century: we should respect the right of interracial couples to solemnize their union
19th century: we should accept that Black people have any rights at all, including solemnizing their unions.
I mean, seriously: when first I heard of it, I assumed it had to be a mixed-race couple, a story like that one a year or two ago where a county clerk (in Louisana, maybe?) refused to grant marriage licenses to mixed-race couples. But this is full-on antebellum sh!t here.
But this is full-on antebellum sh!t here.
Depressingly, no. The first church in America did not integrate until 1839, and that was Boston. I imagine the South was a lot later.
I’m sorry, but that was phrased badly and inaccurately.
The first church in Boston, organized in 1630, is still known as First Church. It was the original Puritan church in Boston; by the 19th century it was (and still is) Unitarian Universalist, and was a very strong center of abolitionism.
First Baptist is the church to which you linked. There are lots of “First” churches in most older cities and towns; it usually means it was the first church of its denomination in the area.
Still, it is not surprising that the first Baptist church to integrate would have been in Boston.
You are right, badly phrased. The first integrated church was in Boston, in 1839.
Few things in American politics piss me off more than the ingrained cultural deference to the South’s allegedly superior patriotism. The political elites of the South and their most fervent supporters are not my countrymen. Rather, they’re a bunch of racist, homophobic, xenophobic, militaristic, religiously chauvinistic, authoritarian SOBs, who have sought to divide and destroy our country since its founding whenever they don’t get their way. Eff them all. They can go jump in a frigging lake wearing heavy chains.
Something really weird about the South is how its deeply ingrained ressentiment became the national conservative mood. Listening to the Republican Party, you’d think the whole damn country had had its ass kicked and was still sulking about it.
From s NY Times story about Chick-Fil-A as Southern cooking:
Speaking as a member of organized labor, welcome to the club, and get over your damn self.
the South’s allegedly superior patriotism
Which they will tell you about at great length while wearing a ballcap or t-shirt emblazoned with the most blatant symbol of treason in this country’s history.
I’d say those qualities are sadly American to the core.
Well, Deep South America anyway. The attitude is rare elsewhere.
Come visit Montana sometime. We have plenty of them and we call them the Montana Republican Party. The real loons are called the Libertarian Pary or the Constitution Party.
And more generally, we don’t get to choose our countrymen. If there’s something about them that galls us, we have to work with it.
Jesus, LGM, I get on the internet to briefly *forget* my state of residence ….
I have no doubt that a small but vocal minority of folks could get everyone else to vote the pastor out – after all, there’s already been a self-selection process to *join* the organization that selects against independent thought. These are people who *need* a shepherd – and if the Lord’s not handy, the local howling bigot will do just fine…