A city councilman from Georgia resigned ahead of a recall election after his opposition to interracial marriage sparked outrage.
Hoschton City Councilman Jim Clevelands triggered calls for his removal from office after he claimed his “Christian beliefs” led him to oppose mixed-race marriages. He claimed interracial marriage makes his “blood boil” because it’s “not the way a Christian is supposed to live.”
“I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, and I have been taught to believe, and it makes a lot of sense to me, that God created all these different races and if he had wanted them all commingled into one race, he would have done it himself,” Clevelands explained.
He added, “Why did he create all these races if he didn’t mean for us to be separated by race?”
Clevelands maintained that he does not believe opposing interracial marriage is racist, saying, “I’m not racist, but I do not believe in interracial marriage.”
The councilman’s remarks became part of a larger investigation after Mayor Theresa Kenerly refused to hire a black man to work as a city administrator in May. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kenerley said Hoschton “isn’t ready” for a black city administrator which is why she declined to give him the position. Kenerly denied that race was the reason she didn’t hire the man.
Clevelands defended Kenerly as the city demanded an ethics investigation into the city’s hiring decisions. The two worked to block the ethics investigation from taking place, which was part of the foundation for a local judge’s ruling to allow citizens to move forward with a recall election against Kenerly and Clevelands.
The two appealed the ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court, but the court declined to hear their case, upholding the lower court’s ruling. Instead of facing a recall election, Clevelands announced his resignation.
“They filed ethics complaints, and when that didn’t go anywhere, they started a recall against me and the mayor,” he told ABC News on Tuesday. “It went all the way through, and it got approved for a recall election. My thinking of it was, ‘If they got it this far, then why go through an election and let them recall me? I’ll just resign.'”
He added, “I am still, in my opinion, a respected member of this community. I have more people, I believe, that feel the way I do about everything. But the ones that are against me are a very, very vocal group. And I’m just tired of hearing it.”
Clevelands continued, “They are calling me a racist, and I don’t consider myself a racist, and I’ll tell you why. I have very good friends that are black. I have Spanish, Asians, all kinds of members in my church, and none of them consider me a racist. “
He said he had no plans to stay in Hoschton after his resignation, saying, “There is a lot on the plate for Hoschton, and some of it is not going to go well. It’s not going to be a good place for me to live.”
Kenerly has yet to announce whether she plans to stick around for the recall election or follow Clevelands’s lead.
