“I’m not a racist,” said Louisiana Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell.

According to a recent CNN article, Bardwell denied a couple a marriage license because they weren’t the same race.

If denying a marriage license to a couple because they weren’t the same race isn’t a form of racism then I’m not sure what is.

No, but really, it wasn’t their race he had a problem with because, as he said in the article, he marries black people in his own home.

So what was the problem?

“My main concern is for the children,” Bardwell said. According to the article, he has found that interracial marriages don’t last.

He didn’t want the doomed-to-divorce interracial couple to have a child who would have to deal with the domestic disruption.

But what if the couple didn’t marry, had a child and then broke up? That obviously didn’t cross his mind.

Neither did the fact that a giant proportion of marriages in the United States end in divorce, nor the fact that Christians, especially Evangelicals, have high divorce rates, according to research cited on Religioustolerance.org. So, why doesn’t he refuse to marry Evangelical Christians or Americans in general?

I don’t know.

And I don’t much care whether or not he thinks he is a racist or if he thinks interracial marriages end in divorce. Refusing to grant marriage licenses on the basis of race is illegal and Bardwell will probably lose his job — Gov. Bobby Jindal is calling for Bardwell’s dismissal and revocation of his license. It’s pretty clear-cut, and thankfully, Bardwell hasn’t received much support, and many have spoken out against him.

So, needless to say, I’m not really worried about the legal status of interracial marriage. But I am struck by the way his reasoning echoes the arguments of those who oppose gay marriage.

Just think of the children.

When people deny others their civil rights on the basis of what’s best for the kids, I wonder where they’re getting their information.

Sure, a perfect home with perfect parents who have perfect incomes and practice perfect parenting skills would be … perfect.

But none of us actually know what that kind of home looks like, and even if we think we do, we shouldn’t have the right to prevent others from living the way that makes them happy, especially if they aren’t hurting anyone. In other words, there are a lot of ways to have a great family and to be good parents.

But so many people think they know the one way a family should be like, or perhaps, what one shouldn’t be like. They take their assumption and hurt people with it, just like Bardwell did to the interracial couple.

I wish people like Bardwell could see that a successful marriage doesn’t just depend on race, and I wish for other people that it didn’t just depend on gender. Marriage depends on mutual respect and love — something two people can have regardless of their … anything.

Reach Becky at rrubens1@asu.edu.