On June 12, 1967, I was almost 4 years old. I wasn't too politically aware at that stage of my life. My biggest concerns were probably what I was eating for lunch and when would my naptime come. (Hmm, not too different 40 years later, come to think of it.) Little known to me, however, the US Supreme Court was handing down a unanimous decision that would greatly affect the society that I grew up in as well as my own personal life. That decision, Loving v. Virgina, struck down the ban against interracial marriage that at the time was in effect in 16 states.
Thirty years later, mr. sarahnity and I were living in one of those states when we decided to end our ten year courtship by getting married. Our country and our society had changed so much in 30 years that the idea that our marriage would be against the law was considered laughably quaint by that time.
In the forty years since that decision was handed down, miscegenation has gone from being so hated and feared that it was punishable by imprisonment to an event so unremarkable that even the word has fallen into disuse. Was the Supreme Court decision a catalyst for the changes in our society or just a reflection of changes that were already in motion? A little of both, I suspect. One could argue that the prohibitions against interracial marriages were already crumbling. By 1967, 10 of the 26 states that had instituted anti-miscegenation laws had repealed them (twenty-four states never implemented such laws). A single supreme court decision rendered the laws in the remaining 16 states null and void. The fact that it took over thirty more years before the last two of those states (South Carolina and Alabama) would repeal these laws by popular vote argues that without the intervention of the supreme court, my marriage would still be illegal in some states even today.
Today there is another class of people who are legally denied the right to marry the spouse of their choice. DailyKos is currently showing an ad from one group who is working to overturn this legalized discrimination. I live in one of the most liberal regions of the most liberal states in the country, and yet the other day I saw a car with the pictograph bumper sticker:
Marriage = (man) + (woman)
The fact that we were in moving traffic deterred me from jumping out and confronting the driver, but it is a sign of how far we still have to travel that such a position is so accepted that one can in essence yell, "I'm a bigot!" with impunity. We cannot wait for popular opinion to change of its own accord. Legislative and judicial action will be necessary components in any effective strategy for change.
Interracial marriage had been legal and practiced in some segments of American society before there even was an United States of America. The first recorded interracial marriage on this continent was John Rolfe and Pocahantas in 1614. It only took 450 years to remove the last legal barrier to such marriages. I certainly hope that it doesn't take another 450 years to remove the discriminatory laws against gay marriage.
On this anniversary, I just want to send a heartfelt, "Thank You!" to Chief Justice Earl Warren and the other eight old white male activist judges who helped to make this country a better place to grow and live: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, and Abe Fortas.