Fighting over marriage four decades ago

[IndianaGreen]

Mildred and Richard Loving were married
during a time when interracial marriages
were illegal. They successfully challenged
Virginia's anti-miscegenation law.
(File photo by AP)

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2006

Fighting over marriage four decades ago

As legislators debate the merits of gay marriage in Maryland and Virginia this week, it seems an appropriate time to review another marriage debate that raged in every state in this country except one since the founding days of the United States.

At one time it was illegal for a white person and a black person to marry in every state in the union save Vermont.


Anti-miscegenation laws were on the books and enforced as the law of the land in 16 states until 1967. Before then, anti-miscegenation laws were slow to fall by the wayside in other states because of deeply rooted centuries-old prejudices and fear of what mix-raced unions would do to the sanctity of marriage in this country. Sound familiar?

<snip>

In its 1967 groundbreaking decision, Loving vs. Virginia, the United State Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional. Mildred and Richard Loving were married in Washington, D.C., in June 1958. When they returned to Virginia, they were indicted by a Caroline County grand jury, which charged the two violated the state’s ban on interracial marriages.

In January 1959, they pleaded guilty and were sentenced to a year in jail. Their marriage was nullified. The jail sentence was suspended on the condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and not return together for at least 25 years. In November 1963, the Lovings filed a motion in state court to overturn the judgment and set aside the sentence because. They argued the interracial-marriage law was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.

http://www.houstonvoice.com/blog/index.cfm?type=blog&start=1/30/06&end=2/6/06#4972

[dsc]

1. and that victory was won in the courts where ours will eventually be

Majorities never voluntarily give minorities rights.

[IndianaGreen]

2. Not if they change the federal and states' constitutions

In effect, the rightwing is willing to deal a fatal blow to the Fourteenth Amendment, which they never did like, in order to keep LGBTs as a lesser class of citizens.

We must never accept accommodation with homophobes, no matter what letter follows their name.

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. State constitutions are irrelevant

When Loving was decided, 18 states had prohibited interracial marriage in some way; some, like Virginia, had made it a felony to leave the state and get married elsewhere. I believe six states actually had it as part of their state constitutions. It wasn't until 2000 that Alabama amended its constitution to make interracial marriages legal; since the Loving decision was handed down, however, that constitutional mandate was entirely unenforceable.

http://www.sos.state.al.us/election/2000/general/amendlang.htm
Amendment 2

All it would take (as bloody unlikely as it would be with the current Supreme Court) is another Loving ruling. I think it extremely unlikely that an amendment to the US Constitution would get the needed 2/3 vote in both houses of Congress followed by a majority vote of 38 states.

[IndianaGreen]

5. You better check what the rightwingers in your state are up to

the ones in my state have joined a nationwide effort to change state constitutions to ban same sex marriages. The same culprits are also trying to pass laws banning abortions in total, clearly expecting the Scalito court to reverse Roe v. Wade and sending the issue to the states.

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. Read the actual ruling

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=388&invol=1

My favorite part is where Chief Justice Warren Burger makes his summation:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

These convictions must be reversed.


It is so ordered.

I have yet to see a reasoned, rational argument about why race may not be a factor in marriage, but gender can.

[TaleWgnDg]

6. I've never seen their photo. Thanks. Now I have.

Loving v. Virginia was (and remains) a vital SCOTUS decision.

[moose65]

7. Does anyone know....

Are the Lovings still alive? I wonder what happened to them after this court decision.