Today is the 50th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia

Fifty years ago, the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Loving v. Virginia which struck anti-miscegenation laws down nationwide that had theretofore barred interracial marriage.   It is critical to remember that not once, but twice the Virginia Supreme Court ruled to uphold Virginia's interracial marriage bans. Among the justifications cited for the ban in the litigation prior to the U.S. Supreme Court decision was the Bible. As has happened time and time again both before and since the Loving ruling - and as recently as Donald Trump's appearance before the Christofascists' Faith and Freedom Coalition - the Bible has been used to justify bigotry and mistreatment of others. The reality is that other than during the early days of the American Revolution, the initial founding of the nation and the last three (3) years, Virginia has been consistently on the wrong side of history.   First through it's defense of slavery, then through it's efforts to destroy Reconstruction policies supporting equality, next by its engagement in "Massive Resistance" to oppose public schools desegregation, and most recently anti-gay bigotry. Things changed under the McAuliffe/Northam/Herring regime when the entire Democratic ticket supported same sex marriage.  Yet the Republican Party and its allies continue to push a reactionary agenda of bigotry.  Indeed, they seek to take Virginia back to its ugliest moments.  Here are highlights from a piece in U.S. News and Reports that looks at the legacy of the Loving decision:

On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down as unconstitutional 16 state bans on interracial marriage. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and black woman who had been jailed for being married to each other.

After the court's decision, the Lovings lived quietly in their native Virginia with their three children until Richard Loving's death in a 1975 car crash. Mildred Loving, critically injured in that same crash, never remarried and largely shunned publicity. She granted a rare interview to The Associated Press in 2007, the 40th anniversary of her legal victory, and died the following year.

In observance of the 50th anniversary of the landmark Loving decision, The Associated Press is republishing its last interview with Mildred Loving, by reporter Dionne Walker.

Born Mildred Jeter, she's mostly known by the name she took when she — a black woman living in segregated Virginia — dared to break the rules by marrying a white man named Richard Loving.

The union landed the Lovings in jail, and then before the U.S. Supreme Court, and finally in the history books; 40 years ago Tuesday, the court ruled in favor of the couple, overturning laws prohibiting interracial unions and changing the face of America.

Mildred Loving is a matriarch to thousands of mixed couples now sprinkled in every city. But she hardly considers herself a hero — just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.
"It wasn't my doing," Loving told The Associated Press, in a rare interview. "It was God's work."

While the rest of the Jim Crow South struggled to divide the races in the early '50s, blacks and whites in tiny Central Point had long been intertwined. They worked together on farms, raising chickens and tobacco. And often, they were intimate, explained Edward Clarke, who grew up in the town an hour outside Richmond, today little more than vast fields, ragtag homes and weed-choked farm houses.

Standing in the hilly cemetery in which Richard Loving is buried, he swept his hand out over the markers reading Jeter, Byrd and Fortune — black folks, he explained, many so pale they could pass for white.

[T]hey drove some 80 miles to Washington, D.C., in 1958, married and returned to Central Point to start a new life.

"I think he thought (if) we were married, they couldn't bother us," Mildred said.
Within a month, they were in jail.

Now 84, then-Sheriff Garnett Brooks vividly recalls bursting into the Lovings' home at 2 a.m., rousing the couple out of their sleep and hauling them off to face the law. Word of their marriage — nobody's sure who complained — had reached the commonwealth's attorney.

"He told me to go and check on them and if they are (married), arrest them," said Brooks, who insists the case wasn't about race but about illegal cohabitation. "I told him I'd be glad to do it."
A 28-year-old Phil Hirschkop was just a few months out of law school when he overheard a professor discussing the Lovings with another lawyer, Bernard Cohen.

It was 1964, and the Lovings had spent the past few years living in exile in Washington after being convicted on charges of "cohabitating as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth," according to their indictments. Laws banning racially mixed marriages existed in at least 17 states.

Hirschkop was convinced the Supreme Court was ready for change, too — but the right case had to come before the justices, free of any legal loopholes the state could seize upon. The Lovings presented such a case.

Hirschkop argued that the laws must treat each citizen equally, and that "when a law is based on race, it is immediately suspect and the burden is shifted to the state to show there is a compelling interest to have that sort of racial differentiation."
On June 12, 1967, the court agreed.

Each June 12, Loving Day events around the country mark the advances of mixed-race couples. Mildred doesn't pay much attention to the grassroots celebrations.

Mostly she spends time enjoying her family, two dogs, and the countryside she fought so fiercely to again call home. She wishes her husband was there to enjoy it with her.  "He used to take care of me," said Mildred Loving. "He was my support, he was my rock."

Before she died, Mildred Loving endorse same sex marriage which she viewed very similarly to her own situation: individuals should be able to marry the person that they love.   Like the Lovings, the husband and I were married in the District of Columbia since same sex marriage was illegal at the time in Virginia.  No one was harmed by the Lovings' marriage.  No one was harmed by my marriage to my husband.  Yet the same forces of hate and division that made both marriages illegal in Virginia are alive and well.   All three of the Republican candidates for governor are beholden to the Christofascists who support both bans on interracial marriage and same sex marriage.  In Virginia and elsewhere religion has been used to justify so much hared and abuse of others.  Today is a perfect day to remember that religion has no place in America's civil laws. 

Are HGTV's Joanna and Chip Gaines Typical Anti-Gay Hypocrites?

One of the favorite tactics of anti-gay Christian zealots - hate merchants is actual a more appropriate term - is to the claim that they and their ignorance and hate based beliefs deserve to be treated with respect and tolerance even as they spread lies and hatred about LGBT citizens who are merely seeking the same civil rights that heterosexuals have enjoyed for centuries. Somehow in the bizarre world of the Christofascists their efforts to criminalize other citizens and strip them of civil rights deserves the same "tolerance" as the efforts of those who seek to end discrimination, mistreatment of others, the discarding of children by their "godly Christian" parents, and oppose to quack "experts" who claim that sexual orientation is as choice and can be "changed" if one merely resolves to "stop sinning."  If nothing else, the recent presidential election has served to unmask many who are seemingly more motivated by hatred of others, a desire to hold onto white privilege, and to inflict their religious views on all (for these folks, religious freedom only applies to them and no one else). Now, thanks to BuzzFeed we have learned that "Fixer Upper" stars Joanna and Chip attend a church headed by a stridently anti-gay pastor who opposes gay rights and support "ex-gay" conversion therapy that is condemned by every legitimate medical and mental health association in America,  As the piece also pointed out, the Gaines, unlike many of the remodeling and flip shows on HGTV, do mot work with same sex couples.  Here are highlights from the BuzzFeed piece:

Chip and Joanna Gaines’ series Fixer Upper is one of the most popular shows on HGTV. The couple has recently graced the cover of People magazine; their book, The Magnolia Story, has been on the New York Times’ best-seller list for five weeks; and they were the subject of a long profile in Texas Monthly that credited them with revitalizing the city of Waco, Texas, where the show is set and where their businesses are located. The couple are riding a wave of success, largely due to their charm and appeal. 

They are also, as they detail in The Magnolia Story, devout Christians — Joanna has spoken of and written about her conversations with God. (God told her both to close her store to spend time with her children, and then to reopen it a few years later.) Their church, Antioch Community Church, is a nondenominational, evangelical, mission-based megachurch. And their pastor, Jimmy Seibert, who described the Gaineses as “dear friends” in a recent video, takes a hard line against same-sex marriage and promotes converting LGBT people into being straight.

So are the Gaineses against same-sex marriage? And would they ever feature a same-sex couple on the show, as have HGTV’s House Hunters and Property Brothers? Emails to Brock Murphy, the public relations director at their company, Magnolia, were not returned. HGTV’s PR department did not respond to initial emails and calls. Two days after this story was published, they released the following statement: “We don’t discriminate against members of the LGBT community in any of our shows. HGTV is proud to have a crystal clear, consistent record of including people from all walks of life in its series.”
 Seibert clearly does not offer any wiggle room on the issue, as he says emphatically in his sermon: “Business leaders, you will have to be clear about who you are. And you will have to be willing to stand to lose even a deal or two or 

While Joanna and Chip Gaines have yet to directly respond to requests for comment, the usual suspects and "news" outlets like Breitbart, The Federalist and The Christian Post to name a few are rallying to the Gaines' defense and attacking the author of the BuzzFeed piece while fanning the flames of the carefully manufactured myth that American Christians are being persecuted.  Anything rather than admit the truth that what is really happening is that many - perhaps a majority in society - are finally saying "enough!" to the Christofascists' persecution of others.  In the sick minds of the Christofascists, being challenged about their centuries of mistreatment and persecution of others somehow equates to persecution.

As for Joanna and Chip Gaines, until they have the spine to publicly respond to the allegations, the husband and I will no longer be watching their show (which until now had been a favorite).  Their silence seems to be an admission that they support their pastor's foul and scientifically false views.  Yes, the Gaines are free to believe such horrible lies if they choose and attend a church that preaches hate - they reportedly attend the church this past weekend - but the rest of us are equally free to change channels when their show comes on and to avoid purchasing any merchandise connected to them.  Whether the Christofascists like it or not, freedom of religion is a two way street and Joanna and Chip Gaines may be about to receive a harsh lesson in that reality if they do not disclaim their church's toxic anti-gay lies.  They might even want to have a chat with the Benham brothers who destroyed their own careers.

From my own experience, sexual orientation is not a choice.  Embracing ignorance, anti-science myths, and hatred towards others in contrast is 100% a choice.