ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 3, 1996 TAG: 9604030058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: THOMASVILLE, GA.
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
A BIRACIAL COUPLE want to be married in the church that made a flap over burying their baby in its cemetery.
An all-white church that backed down from an attempt to remove a mixed-race baby from its cemetery is refusing to marry the child's parents or let them join the church, the family said Tuesday.
Lila Wireman, the baby's great-grandmother, said deacon Logan Lewis told her the child's parents, Jamie Wireman and Jeffrey ``Bubba'' Johnson, would not be allowed to wed at Barnetts Creek Baptist Church. ``Logan said they're living in sin and their child was born in sin because they were not married.''
Jamie Wireman, 18, who is white, and Johnson, 25, who is black, have lived together for more than two years.
Lewis said he had not received a marriage request but didn't ``think it's the appropriate time for this because I don't think there is any repentance in [the couple's] heart.'''
The deacon called the new controversy an attempt to persecute the 200-member church.
The couple's baby, Whitney, was born March 18 without a completely formed skull and died 19 hours later. She was buried next to her grandfather in the church's cemetery.
After learning the baby had a black father, the church's seven deacons voted unanimously to remove the infant's body, citing a church policy dating from the 1800s that barred minorities from the cemetery.
The deacons later decided to let the baby stay, and church leaders offered an apology Friday during a meeting with the family.
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