The Loving Story - A Parable for Gay Marriage

Tonight HBO will be running "The Loving Story" a documentary which is a love story and an examination of the landmark civil rights case handed down by the U. S. Supreme Court. The story focuses on one of Virginia's more shameful episodes in history as well. Not that the Republican Party of Virginia seems to have learned anything from the ruling given its ongoing anti-gay jihad in the Virginia General Assembly. Like it or not, today's opponents of LGBT rights in this state are no better than the segregationists of 40 plus years ago. While they justify their actions on religious believe, stripped away of this false smoke screen it all boils down to hate and bigotry - and, in my view, a very sick psychological need to feel superior to others. The New York Times looks at the upcoming broadcast. Here are some highlights:

“The Loving Story” may be one of the slyest sleights of programming in HBO history: . . . which takes care of Valentine’s Day and Black History Month. There’s more: because the film focuses on the battle to overturn laws against mixed-race marriages, HBO is also marketing it as a parable for the gay marriage movement.

The tone of the film is solemn and pious, which seems almost inevitable when the topic is segregation and racial intolerance. But there are other reasons to watch this film besides feel-good expediency.

The Lovings became civil rights activists by default: victims of the times, the color of their skin and a willful, wrongheaded judge in Virginia. By accident, more than design, they made history.

And it was a remarkable moment in time, one that today seems prehistoric. In 1958, only three years before Barack Obama’s parents married, the newlyweds were awakened in their bed in the middle of the night by flashlights shining in their faces. Mildred explained that she was Richard’s wife. “Not here, you’re not,” the sheriff replied as he put them under arrest.

Not long after, in a plea bargain, Judge Leon M. Bazile essentially banished them — back then, interracial marriage was illegal in more than 20 states, including Virginia.

Richard and Mildred spent the next nine years fighting for the right to go home, and the film helps explains why this reserved, quiet husband and wife were so determined to return to a state that had tossed them out. Both were simple country people who wanted to be near their families and friends . . .

[T]he white and colored went to school different, things like that, you know, they couldn’t go to the same restaurants,” she says softly. “I knew that, but I didn’t realize how bad it was until we got married.”

Mrs. Loving wrote to Robert F. Kennedy, then the United States attorney general, asking for help, which came from the American Civil Liberties Union. At least half the film focuses on the legal battle to strike down Judge Bazile’s decision, a struggle that was finally resolved by the Supreme Court in 1967.

“The Supreme Court held today that marriages of whites and Negroes are legal and no state may stop them,” is how David Brinkley, then an NBC News anchor, described the decision. The ruling was unanimous, and Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion.

The mindset of bigotry and discrimination that the production will show in Virginia is sadly alive and well and predominates the state GOP and the self-congratulatory bigots at The Family Foundation. Substitute sexual orientation for race and Victoria Cobb and her fellow hate merchants are singing the same old song of hate that is still a stain on Virginia to this day.