A correspondent writes:
when i see inter-racial couples my spirit tells me that this is not natural. i have seen the child of an inter-racial marriage. the child had a black skin, had a white scalp with bright red hair. the child looked like a freak
I can’t agree with you, nor does the Church. From a moral perspective, differences in skin color are no more significant than differences in hair color or eye color. Neither are other racial characteristics. The human race is already one big family; it’s simply that certain characteristics have come to predominate in different parts of that family.
From the perspective of intrinsic morality, there is no more reason for people with different skin colors not to marry than for people with different hair colors or different eye colors. That may lead to uncommon combinations, but hey, I always thought Storm from the X-Men looked cool.
There can be extrinsic reasons why individuals of different racial backgrounds ought not marry. E.g., two hundred years ago in America a mixed-race couple would face an extremely hard life, including in some places imprisonment or worse. For example, in early Utah Brigham Young decreed that any white man who had conjugal relations with a black woman was to be put to death:
Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so [Journal of Discourses 10:109].
Fortunately, in the developed world, the attitudes creating such factors have virtually disappeared.
Let me share with you the Bible’s perspective on interracial marriages. First, they are not at all unusual in Scripture. Palestine is located at a major junction between Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and so mixed race marriages were far from unknown. They occasionally crop up in the Bible. For example, two of the tribes of Israel (Ephraim and Manasseh) resulted from the union of the patriarch Joseph (a Semite) with the daughter of Pharoah’s high priest (an Egyptian, and thus a Hamite).
Scripture also records God’s intense displeasure at the criticism of one particular interracial marriage. In Numbers 12 we read that Moses’ brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, criticized Moses for marrying a black woman (she is described as a Cushite, meaning she was probably of Ethiopian ancestry):
Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.
And the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood at the door of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forward. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against them, and he departed; and when the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned towards Miriam, and behold, she was leprous.
And Aaron said to Moses, “Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned. And Moses cried to the LORD, “Heal her, O God, I beseech thee.”
But the LORD said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be shamed seven days? Let her be shut up outside the camp seven days, and after that she may be brought in again.” So Miriam was shut up outside the camp seven days; and the people did not set out on the march till Miriam was brought in again [Num. 12:1, 5, 9-11, 13-15].
In this passage the text notes that Miriam, who had been criticizing Moses for marrying a black woman, was turned “as white as snow” by her leprosy. It is as if God is saying, “You want white? I got yer white! I got yer white right here!”
