Intermarriage

Intermarriage
Intermarriage can be defined as a family union between people of different races, religions, tribes, castes, or ethnic groups, but perhaps a better definition of intermarriage would be a profound commitment to mutual understanding and universality of human family. The intermarriage rate is a good indicator of racism of a society. People openly advocating racism are either uncultured primitives or warped personalities. However, the most insidious racists are people who overtly indicate their dislike of racism, are superficially friendly to ‘those’ people, but harbor deep racist prejudice. Typically, this type of person would not consider marrying outside of the in-group defined by race, religion, or nationality.

Bogardus' Social Distance Scale Racism can be measured by the Bogardus' Social Distance Scale. This scale, shown below, is typically preambled by the statement, 'How would you feel about having member(s) of the following group(s)...(Jews, Christians, Moslems, Blacks, Gypsies, Navaho Indians, Chinese, etc.)'
1. As a close relative by marrying my daughter
2. As a close relative by marrying my son but not my daughter
3. As my spouse
4. As my close personal friend
5. Living in my neighborhood
6. As my coworkers
7. As the United States citizens
8. As temporary laborers in the United States
9. I would like to expel them from the United States

This scale typically generates subjects by items data that conform to the implicational (Guttman) scale, such as

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

President Bush II speaking engagement at the Bob Jones University called national attention to the bans on interracial dating. The reasons given by the administration of the Bob Jones University for the ban on interracial dating and marriage were that
'Bob Jones University is opposed to intermarriage of the races because it breaks down the barriers God has established. It mixes that which God separated and intends to keep separate.

On the top of the Ku Klux Klan's web page is the Blue Eagle flying over the headlines

Love the Diversity of God's Creation
Practice Racial Integrity
Don't Race Mix
Race Mixing is Wrong

Intermarriage and Monotheistic Religions

Qur'an 2:221 and 24:3 forbid Muslims, men and women alike, to marry idolaters, unless the idolaters convert to Islam. A non-Moslem man of whatever religion is compelled to embrace Islam if he is to marry a Moslem woman.' (Islamic Institute for Information and Education).

Disparity of worship embraces and renders null and void the marriage of a Catholic with pagan, Mohammedan, Jew, catechumen, heretic and schismatic.' (Catholic Encyclopedia).

Intermarriage has created a silent holocaust in this generation. Intermarrying may have become fashionable, but it is still wrong and destructive' (Judaism Online).

Although most secular bans on intermarriage were repealed, religious invectives against intermarriage abound. Entering 'intermarriage' into the Google Internet search reveals hundreds of sites, overwhelmingly against the intermarriage and predominantly Jewish. Most arguments against the intermarriage revolve around

Deuteronomy 7:3-4: 'You shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughter to his son, and you shall not take his daughter for your son, for he will cause your child to turn away from after Me and they will worship the gods of others then the L–rd’s wrath will burn against you, and He will destroy you quickly.'

Exodus 19:5,6): 'Now if you obey Me and keep My covenant, you shall be my special treasure among the nations, even though all the world is Mine. You will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.'

'In these few words lies the task for which the Jews were chosen – to be a kingdom of priests. That is his G–d-given responsibility and privilege. To shirk this responsibility is to deny oneself the ultimate privilege. To intermarry is an open violation of that responsibility.'

To Intermarry or Not to Intermarry, that is the Question
The Bob Jones University ban on intermarriage prompted Philip Weiss in his New York Observer (May, 2000) column to ask question 'Is it racist for Jews to oppose intermarriage?' Philip Weiss' answer is affirmative; however his opinion is not universal, as in this respect the Jewish community is divided.

Political Testament of Adolph Hitler
Adolph Hitler in his Political Testament (The Hitler-Bormann Documents, February-April 1945) writes
What advice can we give, then, what rules of conduct can we recommend to those who survive, with their souls untarnished and their hearts unshaken? Battered, left alone to work out its own salvation, existing solely as a custodian during the grim darkness of the night, the German people must strive its very utmost spontaneously to respect those racial laws which we laid down for them.'

The Nuremberg Blood Protection Laws, enacted in 1935, forbade marriage between Germans and non Germans, based on citizenship; Jews were explicitly excluded from citizenship. Observing these commonalities between monotheistic religions and Adolph Hitler's Political Testament, Alice would likely whisper 'curiouser and curiouser.'

Love and the Law: United States, 1958 Around 2:00 a.m. on July 15, 1958, three uniformed officers broke to the Mildred and Richard Loving’s bedroom and Sheriff Brooks demanded that Richard identifies the woman next to him. After Richard pointed to their marriage certificate they framed and hang on the wall, police arrested him and his wife for violating the Virginia's anti-miscegenation law. The judge sentenced them to one year in jail, concluding the sentence with

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no case for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did intend for the races to mix.

On appeal, their sentence was commuted to 25 years probation, provided they leave the state. After the birth of their children Sidney, Donald and Margaret, the Lovings challenged the Virginia's miscegenation law and prevailed on March 7, 1966. This was the first of the state intermarriage laws to be repealed.

Love and the Law: Israel, 2004 Jason Gitlin, writing for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (March 24, 2004) reports that “Earlier this month, Israel’s Knesset defeated two bills that would have finally allowed civil marriages as well as recognized religious marriages performed by Reform and Conservative rabbis. The decision, which wasn’t even close, disappointed and embarrassed non-Orthodox Jews in the United States and those who support Israel’s claim as the Middle East’s only democratic, enlightened nation. This vote suggests that [members of the Knesset] either do not understand or refuse to admit that Israel’s current isolation does not stem solely from the occupation of Palestinian territories or a disconcerting rise in anti-Semitism. The upholding of such clearly discriminatory practices, as those relating to personal-status issues, is impossible to defend. It also arms those who wish to paint Israel as a racist society.

In his 2002 book Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel, Tom Segev discusses Gershom Schocken’s call for intermarriage between Jews and Arabs in order to create a true Israeli nation. Segev observes that the two greatest influences on Israel are Judaism and America and he hopes that one is the past, the other the future. Implicit in his hope is the America defined by coexistence of heterogeneous people and not by separatism of supremacists and religious fanatics. On this point Segev recalls an interview with Shimon Peres after the close 1996 elections when Peres lost to Netanyahu:

Interviewer: “What happened?”
Peres: “We lost.”
Interviewer: “Who is we?”
Peres: “We is the Israelis.”
Interviewer: "And who won?"
Peres: “Those who don’t have an Israeli mentality. Call them the Jews.”

After telling her story, she rested her head on my shoulder and cried. In her previous life she was a Jewish princess from an affluent Ashkenazim family. When she was 19, she went to Israel. In Haifa, where she met a gentle, educated man and they got married. After years of discrimination and ostracism she and her husband, an Ethiopian Jew, moved to the United States.

Among the opponents of intermarriage is Deborah Lipstadt, best know for her book Denying the Holocaust (Penguin, 1994) who writes We know what we fight against:

In his January 26, 2005 article, Richard Kral, describing the discussion with Deborah Lipstadt at Prague's Ninth Gate Festival of Czech-German-Jewish Culture, says that he was flabbergasted when Lipstadt claimed that

and is successfully counteracted by the fact that 'Jews occupy key positions in most contemporary societies.'

The Los Angeles Times (May 21, 2007) describes the stoning of a 17year old girl abstracted as follows:

A slender, black-haired girl is dragged in a headlock through a braying mob. Within seconds, she is on the ground in a fetal position, covering her head with her arms in a futile attempt to fend off a shower of stones. A river of blood oozes from beneath her long, tangled hair...

Duaa married a Sunni Muslim and was assassinated by the Islamic sect (Yazidi, alt. spelling Yezidi), close to the Shiite Muslims. Yazidis believe in heaven and hell, trace their origins to the Adam and Eve Biblical myth, observe strict dietary laws, practice circumcision, and are rigorously endogamous (prohibit intermarriage).

Kayla Williams (2005) describing her sojourn in Iraq with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division in Iraq during 2003 and 2004, mentions that Yazidis expressed to her fondness for America and Israel. Williams' sentiment is shared by Kaplan (2006) who writes in the New Republic that Yazidi

"parents and children line the streets when U.S. patrols pass by, while Yazidi clerics pray for the welfare of the United States forces."

Other girls recently stoned to death

Aside of intermarriage, fundamentalist Christians and Jews believe in stoning to death as an appropriate punishment for (Muslims in a subset of) the following:

Whoever willfully blasphemes the holy name of God
by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God,
His creation, government or final judging of the world,
or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ
or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously
reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule,
the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures
shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than
one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars.

Massachusetts General Laws, Article 261 of the penal code.

Blasphemy

Leviticus 24:16

"And The Lord said to Moses ... He who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him.

Adultery

Deuteronomy 22:23-24

If a man lies with another person's wife, you shall stone them with stones that they die.

Not being virgin on the wedding night

Deuteronomy 22:20-21

"But if this charge is true (that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night), and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel."

Disobeying parents
a stubborn and rebellious son (or daughter?)

Deuteronomy 21:18-21

21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

21:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

21:20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Witchcraft and Wizardry

Leviticus 20:27

A man or woman that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones.

Nonobservance of Sabbath,

Numbers 15:32, 35

"While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day ... And The Lord said to Moses, "The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones."

Worshiping other Gods

Deuteronomy 13:6,10

"If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods ... You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from The Lord your God."

The stoning of Duaa Aswad shows the absurdity of believing that the God of the Bible is the ultimate source of all "objectivity" including morality. This is perhaps the most heinous crime I have ever heard of and certainly the most atrocious I have ever witnessed on video. Just imagine how this poor girl must have suffered. Such things only prove that the God of the Bible not only does not exist, but represents the fanatical and perverse writings of those wanting to have their opinions and rules sanctified by a "higher authority" and their bank accounts augmented by the "love offerings." How anyone could worship such an evil being is completely beyond me. Christians, Jews, and Moslems can take their malevolent fantasy God that tortures young girls to death and do you know what to do with it.

An Italian talk show broadcasted a recorded phone conversation of a Jewish girl with her parents in Israel, as she told them that she is dating a non-Jewish Italian guy. After hearing this, her parents not only disagree, but order her to immediately return to Israel, tell her that Jews should stick with their own, claim that it is a sin to date a non-Jewish guy, and that it would be like eating a pig to hang out with a non-Jewish man. Later into the conversation their voices intensify and the father threatens to kill that motherfucking bastard.

Nina and the Senator In 1998, the Warren Beatty's movie Bullworth flashed on the silver screens before the Fox studios, owned by Rupert Murdoch, managed to burry the picture. Starring Warren Beatty and Halle Berry, this movie about love and politics hardly left a taboo unbroken. Warren Beatty's

What we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction.
Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color'

and Halle Berry's tender 'you know you are my Nigger,' turns this movie, told in rap verses, into one of the best.

The East-West Side Story
One can find on the Internet numerous sites where the interracial couples tell about their personal struggle against racism of their parents or relatives. One of them is the story of Mike (Chinese, Confucian) and Rebecca (white Protestant), now happily married with two children:

'Few gave us a chance. We were so different, and her parents already hated me. They hadn't even met me yet, but Rebecca had told them my name so they knew I was of Asian descent, and that was all the information they needed to pass judgment. She received a letter from her preacher uncle, urging her to stop this foolishness. She was told that her church minister had joined her uncle in passing judgment on our relationship (and me) from afar. A passage was quoted from the Bible about how we were "unequally yoked", and we were told that it would be "against the will of God" for us to marry. Her mother accosted me and asked "why don't you stay with your own kind?" Her parents cut off her financial support. I began to pay her rent and her tuition, and we persevered.'

References

Kaplan, L. (2006) Sinjar Diarist. The New Republic. April 14.
Williams, K. & Staub, M. E. (2005) Love My Rifle More Than You. New York: Norton.

	PART I	ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING WAR
	Chapter 1	About Ethical Canons and War
	Chapter 2	Decisions Precipitating War
	Chapter 3	Human Sacrifice
	Chapter 4	Amiriyah Shelter
	PART II	ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING EQUALITY
	Chapter 5	Slavery
	Chapter 6	Arens' Atrocity Attribution Theory
	Chapter 7	Genocide of Native Americans
	Chapter 8	Intermarriage
	PART III	ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING JUSTICE
	Chapter 9	Incarceration
	Chapter 10	Reemergence of Torture
	Chapter 11	Witchcraft Trials
	Chapter 12	Trials of Heretics
	PART IV	ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING RELIGION
	Chapter 13	The New and Old Testaments
	Chapter 14	Transplanted Mentality
	Chapter 15	God and His Messengers
	PART V	ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING EMPATHY
	Chapter 16	Karla Tucker and George W. Bush
	Chapter 17	A Girl with the Almond Eyes
	Chapter 18	Beyond Partiality: Building a World of Laughter and Love