Opinion: They do, he doesn’t anymore

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Chances are that Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward in Louisiana will get along just fine without the services of Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace who refused to perform a wedding for an interracial couple. The marriages don’t last, Bardwell claimed, and the children are worse off. Bardwell’s the one who didn’t last on this round; he resigned, the state announced today.

In an interview reported by CNN, Bardwell said, ‘I needed to step down because they was going to take me to court, and I was going to lose.’

Actually, the reason he needed to step down is that he’s approximately half a century behind the rest of the nation when it comes to civil rights.

The couple were married elsewhere and are now suing Bardwell and his wife, Beth -- who they claim asked them if they were a ‘mixed couple’ and told them they’d have to go to another parish to wed.

Keith Bardwell sees it all as a matter of conscience, and that might be the one point on which he and I agree. ‘I found out I can’t be a justice of the peace and have a conscience,’ he complained. Conscience does play the key role in this sad, stupid affair: If the man can’t obey the law, he should have been honorable enough not to take the job in the first place.

--Karin Klein