While racism is alive and well in some quarters - e.g., Southwest Virginia and today's Republican Party - most people nowadays are shocked to think that once many states made it illegal for blacks and whites to marry. But, such was the law in Virginia until the U.S. Supreme Court (a Court very different from the one we are now saddled with) struck down laws banning interracial marriage. With a series of federal district court rulings having struck down state bans on same sex marriage, the parallels between the religious basis for bans on interracial marriage and sames sex marriage bans are hard to overlook even if those motivated by anti-gay animus strive to argue otherwise. It is important to remember that the Virginia courts that upheld Virginia's ban on interracial marriage cited God and the Bible just as gay marriage opponents do today. They may try to put lipstick on the pig of religious based bigotry, but it is still a foul swine. A piece in NewsOK looks at the echos of Loving v. Virginia:
To some people in Virginia, the fight over legalization of same-sex marriage echoes a decades-old battle over the state's 1924 law banning marriage between white and black people.
"You're talking about pure prejudice as the basis of both laws," argued Philip J. Hirschkop, who as a young lawyer in the 1960s represented an interracial couple that successfully challenged Virginia's ban on "miscegenation," or mixing of the races.
But opponents of gay marriage reject the comparison. "It's a slur and a slander on all those Americans who understand that there is something unique and special about husbands and wives coming together in marriage," said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous 1967 decision, struck down the Virginia law — and similar ones in roughly one-third of the states.
"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause," Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the landmark ruling.
In February, U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen tossed Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage, concluding it, too, violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. She also made a direct link to the Loving case of 47 years ago.
"Tradition is revered in the Commonwealth, and often rightly so. However, tradition alone cannot justify denying same-sex couples the right to marry any more than it could justify Virginia's ban on interracial marriage," she wrote.
The trial judge in the Loving case had declared, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
"When the question is asked about marriage, most people then dig into their beliefs," said Hilary Shelton, the NAACP's senior vice president for advocacy and policy, noting that many black people attend church. "So when the question's asked about marriage, you find that most will say, well, my religion doesn't support that. But if you ask them if people should be able to legally enter into those contracts, you'll find the numbers go up astronomically."
The way the NAACP is looking at issues like this, it's not that we're necessarily promoting interracial marriage or gay marriage," he said. "We're promoting equal opportunity and equal protection under the law, saying that people of the same gender should be able to enter into that same set of contracts as people of two different genders. So it really is a civil rights issue."
Hirschkop, now 77 and living in Lorton, Va., represented the Lovings before the Supreme Court along with Bernard S. Cohen. He said that case and the same-sex case represented the culmination of a change in societal attitude.
"Loving had reached its time. Enough was enough at that point," he said. "And that's the story of the same-sex marriage now. It's reached its time."
Opponents of marriage equality can whine all they want, but ultimately their opposition boils down to two things: religious belief based bigotry and animus towards gays. Hopefully, more and more of the larger public are coming to see this reality through all the smoke screens the hate merchants are setting up.
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