A Mississippi wedding venue finds itself under intense scrutiny and criticism after denying service to an interracial couple seeking to hold a reception based on what the owner claimed were her religious beliefs:
When LaKambria S. Welch drove to Boone’s Camp Event Hall on Saturday, she was in search of an explanation.
Welch told The Washington Post in an email that her brother and his fiancee had recently been coordinating with the wedding venue in Booneville, Miss., about hosting their upcoming nuptials until they were informed that they were no longer welcome.
Why? Welch said it’s because her brother is black and his bride-to-be is white.
In a now-viral video shared to social media by Welch over the weekend, a woman identified as the event hall’s owner can be seen telling the 24-year-old, “First of all, we don’t do gay weddings or mixed race … because of our Christian race, I mean, our Christian belief.”
By early Tuesday, the clip had amassed more than 2 million views across Twitter and YouTube, with critics slamming the business’s owners as “hateful racists” and calling for the venue to be shuttered. Following the backlash, Boone’s Camp Event Hall took down its Facebook page and its owner penned a lengthy apology, which, in part, chronicled her realization that “biracial relationships were NEVER mentioned in The Bible!” The video was first reported on by the website Deep South Voice.
“To all of those offended, hurt or felt condemn by my statement I truly apologize to you for my ignorance in not knowing the truth about this,” the now-deleted apology read. “My intent was never of racism, but to stand firm on what I ‘assumed’ was right concerning marriage.”
Boone’s Camp Event Hall could not be reached for comment late Monday.
Welch told The Post that her brother and his fiancee had already arranged a date to look at the venue in northeast Mississippi when the couple received a message from one of the owners: They weren’t going to be accommodated anymore, the owner allegedly wrote, citing her Christian beliefs as justification.
Hoping to “gain clarity” on the owner’s beliefs, Welch said she and her mother went to the event hall. Shortly after arriving, Welch started questioning the owner, all while recording the brief interaction.
“When she explained that she doesn’t do the two specific type of weddings, I felt myself starting to shake,” said Welch, referencing the woman’s views on gay and interracial marriages. Welch added, “… just hearing it gave me chills.”
In the video, Welch explains to a soft-spoken woman in a gray T-shirt that her family is Christian. “So what in the Bible tells you that …” Welch begins to ask, before the woman interrupts, saying, “Well, I don’t want to argue my faith.”
The woman continues: “We just don’t participate. We just choose not to.”
“Okay, so that’s your Christian belief right?” Welch presses.
“Yes, ma’am,” the woman responds.
In 2016, Mississippi passed the first law of its kind that protects “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” about same-sex marriages, extramarital sex and people who identify as transgender. The law, however, does not mention race.
Interracial marriage has been legal in the United States since 1967 when the Supreme Court reached its landmark decision in Loving v. Virginia. In 2015, 17 percent of newlyweds in the United States were part of a mixed-race couple, a significant increase from 3 percent in 1967, according to the Pew Research Center. But a recent study found that while people said they accepted interracial relationships, the part of their brain that registers disgust was highly active when they were shown photos of the couples.
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In her apology, the event hall’s owner attempted to explain why she believed the Bible supported her views on interracial marriages, describing how she only recently discovered that wasn’t the case. She began by writing that as “a child growing up in Mississippi” it was an unspoken understanding that people stayed “with your own race.” But then on Saturday, when her husband asked her to point to relevant sections of the Bible, she couldn’t. After spending hours scouring the text and sitting down with her pastor, the owner wrote that she finally concluded that the reasoning behind her decision to turn away Welch’s brother and his fiancee was “incorrect.”
“As my bible reads, there are 2 requirements for marriage and race has nothing to do with either!” the Facebook post read. “All of my years I had ‘assumed’ in my mind that I was correct, but have never taken the opportunity to research and find whether this was correct or incorrect until now.”
She later added: “If I have learned anything from this it would be to know what you’re talking about before you open your mouth! Again … my sincerest apologies to all!”
At least one person said the woman’s “heartfelt apology” warranted forgiveness, but others, including Welch, remained unswayed.
“I am 24 and have been brought up my entire life in a Christian Family; my grandad being a reverend,” Welch wrote in the email to The Post. “If I know that the Bible doesn’t say anything about biracial marriages, she knows too.”
Here’s the video:
As noted, the woman in the video, who is apparently one of the owners or managers of the venue, posted an apology on Facebook which has since been taken down along with the Facebook page for the entire business. Notwithstanding that apology, though, and this woman’s alleged surprise to find out that the Bible doesn’t say a word about interracial marriages and, in fact, doesn’t really say a thing about same-sex marriage or the idea that it would be sinful to provide services for a wedding ceremony that one deemed to be sinful, the apology strikes me as being largely irrelevant compared to the fact that this woman apparently believed this to be the case to begin with.
Obviously, refusing a provide access to an interracial couple would have been a violation of both Federal and state public accommodation laws that clearly make it illegal to refuse service based on criteria such as race, ethnicity, and other criteria. Some states, of course, have also expanded their public accommodation laws to also bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. Several of these cases have made their way through Federal and state courts in recent years, with business owners making the argument that their religious beliefs bar them from providing services to such weddings. So far, though, there has not been a definitive ruling on the issue by the nation’s highest court.
In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Court issued a narrow ruling in favor of the baker in June 2018 in which it found that the court in the proceeding below had not given due consideration to his assertions regarding his religious beliefs. As a result, the Justices held that he was entitled to a new trial. That case could very well end up back at the Supreme Court in the future. This past June, the Court declined to hear two cases raising the same issue, one involving an Oregon baker and another involving a Washington florist and instead ordered both cases remanded for consideration in light of the Court’s ruling in the Colorado case. Eventually, though, the Court will likely be forced to provide some kind of definitive ruling in one of these cases and decide once and for all whether religious belief gives one an excuse to violate anti-discrimination laws that apply to every other business owner.
This case, meanwhile, demonstrates the dangers in the so-called “religious freedom” laws that have been passed in many states, mostly those controlled by Republicans, that purport to allow people to refuse to do business with fellow citizens when it supposedly violated their religious beliefs. The same argument that the bakers in Colorado and Oregon and the Washington florist used to discriminate against same-sex couples can be used to discriminate based on race or any other basis. If that exception is permitted to stand, it’s going to drive a fairly big hole right through laws that have been an important part of civil rights laws ever since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
