The Loving Story and the Wedding Dance

A couple of new films your Head Trucker recommends.

The first one, I'm a little behind time on: it premiered Tuesday night on HBO. Using newly discovered archival footage, it brings to life the principals in the landmark case of Loving v. Virginia, which by a unanimous Supreme Court decision invalidated all remaining laws against interracial marriage in 1967.




The second one is a complete short film by Eliot London, and you will need a hanky for sure.




Support London's new feature-length film about a bullied gay teen here.

Loving - and Loving

Loving v. Virginia, the landmark Supreme Court case striking down all state laws against interracial marriage, was decided on June 12, 1967.  Attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies, representing the plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, have made this short video as a reminder of the fundamental right to marry.




And just to jog your memories a little further, thought I'd throw in this clip from October, 2008 - make of it what you will:

Sound Familiar?

OMG!  If we let those people marry, it will destroy the whole institution of marriage - not to mention the whole country - and bring the world to a screeching halt!  It just ain't Christian, I tell ya.  We have to stop this terrible thing before it destroys us all - and think of the poor little babies too . . . and yada yada yada.

Since Judge Walker posted his ruling last week, there's been a lot of good stuff on marriage equality coming out, and here's another bit I just found, from a commenter on the Guardian's article about the ruling:

“[If interracial couples have a right to marry], all our marriage acts forbidding intermarriage between persons within certain degrees of consanguinity are void.”

(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 40 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting from a prior court case)

“The underlying factors that constitute justification for laws against miscegenation closely parallel those which sustain the validity of prohibitions against incest and incestuous marriages.”

(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 46 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting from a prior court case)

“[T]he State's prohibition of interracial marriage . . . stands on the same footing as the prohibition of polygamous marriage, or incestuous marriage, or the prescription of minimum ages at which people may marry, and the prevention of the marriage of people who are mentally incompetent.”

(Source: Excerpted United States Supreme Court oral argument transcripts from Loving v. Virginia, from Peter Irons and Stephanie Guitton, eds., May it Please the Court (1993) at 282-283, quoting Virginia Assistant Attorney General R. D. McIlwaine, arguing for Virginia's ban on interracial marriage)

“Each [party seeking to marry a member of a different race] has the right and the privilege of marrying within his or her own group.”

(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 46 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting from a prior court case)

“When people of [different races] marry, they cannot possibly have any progeny, . . . and such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid their marriages.”

(Source: A judge in a Missouri case, quoted in Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, May 19,1996)

Allowing interracial marriages “necessarily involves the degradation” of conventional marriage, an institution that “deserves admiration rather than execration.”

(Source: A U.S. representative from Georgia quoted in Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1996)

“[S]uch laws [banning interracial marriage] have been in effect in this country since before our national independence and in this state since our first legislative session. They have never been declared unconstitutional by any court in the land although frequently they have been under attack. It is difficult to see why such laws, valid when enacted and constitutionally enforceable in this state for nearly one hundred years and elsewhere for a much longer period of time, are now unconstitutional under the same constitution.”

(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 35 (Shenk, J. dissenting))

 Note - Perez v. Lippold, aka Perez v. Sharp, is the landmark 1948 decision by the California Supreme Court allowing interracial marriages in that state.

Loving v. Virginia is the 1967 ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court striking down Virginia's miscegenation law, and ending all such bans on interracial marriage throughout the nation.

It's important to understand that both of these cases determined that the laws in question violated the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment - which is exactly what Judge Walker found to be wrong with Prop 8 in the Perry case.


All these points of comparison and more are found in an excellent handout produced by Vermont Freedom to Marry: download the entire 2-page pdf document here.

Send a copy to your nearest and dearest while you're at it.  Probly won't change anybody's mind - but at least now you can quote them chapter and verse, if that's what they like to do to you.


P.S. - From the New York Times, November 12, 2000:

Alabama voters quietly removed one piece of arcana from their Jim Crow-era constitution: a 1901 state law banning marriage between a Negro and Caucasian. The Supreme Court struck down such laws in 1967, but until last week, when voters passed a ballot initiative to purge that law from the books, it held on as the last such state law in the nation. The margin by which the measure passed was itself a statement. A clear majority, 60 percent, voted to remove the miscegenation statute from the state constitution, but 40 percent of Alabamans -- nearly 526,000 people -- voted to keep it.

Also, FYI:  That Texas sodomy statute that the Supremes struck down in 2003?  It's still on the books here in God's Country.  Old times here are not forgotten, oh hell no.


Check out this parody of a Prop 8 ad, from the 2008 election in California:

On Maine, Marriage, and Democracy

Okay, your Head Trucker got on a tear here tonight and couldn't stop.  I'm posting most of it after the jump to save space on this page, but maybe somebody will read it and let me know what you think.

I'm a little pooped tonight but hope I can string these quotes into a coherent post here.  It's important to understand were we are, where we've been, and where we're going.  And by we, I mean not only gays but all Americans.

Sullivan, quoting David Link, points out the victories this week we should not overlook.

Tuesday was a great day for gay rights everywhere but Maine:

We won voter approval of (1) domestic partnerships in Washington; (2) an anti-discrimination ordinance in Kalamazoo; (3) an openly gay city council president in Detroit; and (4) an openly lesbian mayoral candidate in Houston. That seems to say something about the state of anti-gay prejudice in this country.

I agree with David that public opinion is now decisively inclusive of gay people - on every issue but civil marriage. But even on that last issue, we are now essentially neck and neck in California and Maine, the last two states to have referendums on the matter, and we are over 50 percent in Washington state for domestic partnerships that are identical to civil marriage on a state level, but without the m-word.

 Conservative blogger Rod Dreher, though, says we are barking up the wrong tree:

Unless I'm missing something, in the 31 states in which voters had a say on whether or not gay marriage was going to be the law of the land, they all rejected it. Every single state. Even California, the national bellwether state on liberalizing social trends. Even Maine, in the most liberal region of the country.

You can come up with all kinds of theories about why this is, blaming the voters for being bigots, accuse the churches of playing dirty, whatever. The plain fact is, every single time it's been put to a popular vote (as opposed to allowing a tiny number of elites to vote on it), gay marriage has been a loser. . . .

If the pro-SSM left can't convince people of the rightness of their cause, they're perfectly prepared to see their views imposed from on high. Honestly, folks, I understand the case for same-sex marriage, though I don't agree with it, but look, if you're reduced to having to tell the public that they have no right to be consulted about the radical redefinition of a bedrock social and cultural institution, then you have a big, big problem.

Ah, but here is the crux of the matter.  As someone who grew up in the segregated South and remembers it vividly, I can tell you positively that the vast majority of Southerners forty years ago right now, probably 90-something percent in most places, would most certainly have considered segregation a "bedrock social and cultural institution" that absolutely had to be preserved.  The races had to be kept separate.  History, custom, law, and even scripture all showed the necessity of it.   Tamper with that, and the whole structure of society would collapse into anarchy and barbarism and racial warfare.  Seriously.

And besides, after all the fancy talk was done, it always, always, always came down to this remark, and with my own ears I heard it said many a time among the grown-ups:  Yes, but would you want one of them to marry your sister?  End of discussion.  Nothing could follow that unthinkable, utterly repugnant thought.  (Notice how often throughout history the great questions of the day come down to sex in the end.)

Read more of this post after the jump . . . .