Fox Nation Promotes Article Suggesting Obama's Parents' Interracial Marriage Is Problematic

Fox Nation promoted a U.K. Daily Mail article that called President Obama's father a "slippery character." As we've already pointed out, it is problematic for the conservative media to continue to attack Obama's family in order to cast doubt on the president. But there is yet another serious problem with the article. The article suggests there were two problems with the marriage of Obama's parents: the fact that Obama's father might have already been married in Africa and the fact that his parents were involved in an interracial marriage at a time when such marriages "were still illegal in many parts of the U.S." From Fox Nation:

The third paragraph of the Daily Mail article stated: "Obama senior married Stanley Ann Dunham, a white student from Kansas, not only when he was said to have already been married to a woman in Kenya, but at a time when interracial marriages were still illegal in many parts of the U.S."

Here are the first four paragraphs of the Daily Mail article as republished by Fox Nation:

With a father like this, it is little wonder President Obama did not want to release his full birth certificate.

Though the proof that he was actually born in Hawaii may silence some critics, a new, rather more interesting side of his life has emerged - that his father Barack Obama senior was a serial womaniser and polygamist who government and university officials were trying to force out of the country.

Obama senior married Stanley Ann Dunham, a white student from Kansas, not only when he was said to have already been married to a woman in Kenya, but at a time when interracial marriages were still illegal in many parts of the U.S.

Documents obtained from the U.S. immigration service paint a picture of a man who 'had an eye for the ladies' and, according to his file, had to be warned several times to stay away from girls at the university.

Fox Nation and the Daily Mail both used the headline " 'A Slippery Character': New Details Emerge About Obama's Father" for this piece.

But while it is true that interracial marriages would not be legal throughout the United States until the 1967 Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia, one might well ask: Why is it evidence of Obama's father's "slippery character" that his marriage to Obama's mother took place at a time that half the states across America prohibited interracial marriage when Barack Obama Sr. married Ann Dunham?

It is not. It would only be important to someone who considers interracial marriage to be problematic.