Good Christians
“Good Christians could come from every race, but every race must remain true to its own version of God’s plan. Mixing up the races with intermarriage and excessive cross-racial socializing was not only unwise but also positively evil” (Laats 2018).
Being a “good Christian” upheld segregation. In fact, the terminology of “good Christian” is synonymous with White People alone. These “good Christians” were adamant in fighting against interracial marriage because God did not want the races to mix. They utilized Bible scriptures, such as Genesis 11:1-9 that tells the story of Tower of Babel to support bigotry.
It was not until Loving v. Virginia (1967) that the Supreme Court deemed interracial marriage legal. Yet, it was not until the Presidential Election of 2000 that the voters in the State of Alabama removed the ban of interracial marriage. It is important to note that in this election, 40% of the electorate wanted to keep the law that would ban interracial marriage.
Bringing up the argument about these “good Christians” who actively fought against interracial marriage is the epitome of irony when we have a Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who had a poorly written dissent against gay marriage in Obegefell v. Hodges (2015) that explained that unlike interracial marriage, gay people do not need to married; rather, they can simply live together.
On October 6, 2020, Justice Thomas wrote, “By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the court has created a problem that only it can fix.” Thomas is arguing that Christian values are more valuable than the rights of individual rights to marry. In fact, Christians have been “harmed” with this decision that was made “undemocratically.”
The irony about Justice Thomas’ dissents is that these “good Christians” feels the same way about his interracial marriage as he feels about gay marriage. If it was left to voters, this democratic process, then he would have not been able to marry his wife.
Whether you are a supporter of Gay Marriage or not, what we do see is Christianity is being utilized again to take rights away from people. Thomas has been a walking contradiction in his shameful voting record, and sadly, we see another sign of his hypocrisy.