Interracial Love, Dating and Getting Permission From Your Parents

True story.

I came across a Google alert for interracial dating the other day and found people getting crazy about a rule they read in a student handbook from a christian college and I quote:

Interracial dating must be approved in writing and verbally by the parents of both students.

You can imagine the conversation running rampant in the comments over this.

I did a little research and found that it is private college so if you are willing to pay to be in this environment, you probably will have no problem with this rule or any of the other rules which may be difficult for a lot of people to understand.

Permission from your parents to date someone outside of your race is a real surrender of power. And at the heart of interracial dating is a power struggle that has existed since forever and especially in power structures like organized religion.

Let's see what we have to deal with:

• how to achieve everlasting life
• a male dominated authority
• celibacy
• science as heresy
• how to deal with sexuality and the material world
• who gets to be a saint

All this gets in the way of a date?

Let's talk about Mary

Mary who?

Good question.

There are several Marys - not least, of course, Mary the mother of Jesus.

Then there is Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus.

Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, and Mary the wife of Clopas. Equally important, there are three unnamed women who are expressly identified as sexual sinners-the woman with a "bad name" who wipes Jesus' feet with ointment as a signal of repentance, a Samaritan woman whom Jesus meets at a well and an adulteress. Jesus' attitude toward women with sexual histories was one of the things that set him apart from other teachers of the time.

He is remembered as treating women with respect, as equals in his circle; not only did he refuse to reduce them to their sexuality; Jesus was a man who loved women, and whom women loved.

Remember the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, where Mary Magdalene sings, "I don't know how to love him... He's just a man, and I've had so many men before... I want him so. I love him so." The story has timeless appeal, first, because that problem of "how" - whether love should be erotic or platonic; sensual or spiritual; a matter of longing or consummation-defines the human condition. What makes the conflict universal is the dual experience of sex: the necessary means of reproduction and the madness of passionate encounter.

For women, the struggle is maternal/erotic, a tension that men can be reduced to the Madonna/whore opposites fantasy.

Mary was a trusted apostle of Jesus, and that was a major obstacle to establishing that male dominance, which is why, her image had to be recast as one of subservience. The dominance of males established itself in the church of the "Fathers," and the Gospel of Mary was one of the texts shunted aside in the fourth century. Thus Mary of Magdala, who began as a powerful woman at Jesus' side, "became," "the redeemed whore and Christianity's model of repentance, a manageable, controllable figure, and effective weapon and instrument of propaganda against her own sex."

Let's take a closer look at what actually happened with Mary, shall we?

There was a harnessing of sexual restlessness to her image. There was the humane appeal of forgiveness and redemption. But what most drove the anti-sexual sexualizing of Mary Magdalene was the male need to dominate women.

In the Church, as elsewhere, that need is still being met.

And these are the real power struggles behind your interracial date.

So here's what I would say to your parents:

1. Man was originally created in the image and likeness of God; I am going out on a date with someone who was created in the image and likeness of God.

2. Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. See what happens when you date outside your species?

3. There is one God, who is infinitely perfect, existing eternally in three persons. How do you expect to get three people to agree on anything?

Stay strong in your belief in your choice to be with another human being.