"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." --Bishop Desmond Tutu

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Some are more equal than others...

I've been thinking a lot about the bigotry displayed on the wingnut religious right around the question of gay marriage. Their hatred of gays and the idea that somehow the marriage of two men and two women "destroys" marriage is legendary. But then I remembered there used to be a word for the kind of narrow-minded definition of marriage advocated by these zealots: miscegenation. It wasn't same-sex marriage that had them frothing at the mouth, but rather integration and the perils of interracial marriage.

"If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God's word and had desired to do the Lord's will, I am quite confident that the 1954 [Brown v Board of Education] decision would never have been made," Falwell boomed from above his congregation in Lynchburg. "The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line."

Falwell's jeremiad continued: "The true Negro does not want integration.... He realizes his potential is far better among his own race." Falwell went on to announce that integration "will destroy our race eventually. In one northern city," he warned, "a pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live next door to his church as man and wife."

It wasn't until 1967, that a judge in Virginia, Leon Bazile, heard a case from a white man and a black woman who were denied a marriage license under Virginia's Racial Integrity Act. Writing his opinion, he stated
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
This case, Loving v Virginia ended up at the US Supreme Court where the majority found that
Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival.... 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 to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
Amazing. It's a constitutional issue, not a "states rights" issue. Based on this precedent (and our legal system is all about precedent) it's not much of a leap from the ruling in Loving v Virginia to a ruling that affirms
The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by sexual preference discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of the same sex resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
Why is that so hard for people to understand this? Just to refresh everyone's memory on Section 1 of the 14th amendment
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Equal Protection. It was good for interracial couples. It's good for gay couples. It's the right thing to do.

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