Friday, May 09, 2008
Editorial: Loving v. Virginia
An interracial marriage didn't count in Virginia. Fifty years later, discrimination takes other forms.
From the RoundTable blog
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Virginia wasn't always for lovers. Fifty years ago, Mildred and Richard Loving had to go to Washington, D.C., to get married because Virginia prohibited interracial marriage.
They returned to Virginia hoping all would be well, but were rousted by sheriff's deputies at 2 a.m. and told their marriage certificate wasn't any good in the comonwealth.
The couple was actually banished from the state, told never to come back together.
The judge cited God as his authority: "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 marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
The Lovings could stand their exile for only a few years. The American Civil Liberties Union took their case. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage in the landmark decision Loving v. Virginia.
The court's decision said, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men," and called the freedom to marry a "basic civil right."
When she and her husband were told of the decision, Mildred Loving said, "I feel free now. ... It was a great burden."
She died last Friday of pneumonia, having lived out a quiet, modest life.
Loving didn't consider herself a civil rights pioneer. As she told The Washington Post in 1992, "What happened, we really didn't intend for it to happen. What we wanted, we wanted to come home."
Loving, whose husband was killed in 1975 by a drunken driver, eventually stopped giving interviews.
But she broke her silence last year on the 40th anniversary of the ruling, to speak out in favor of gay marriage.
"I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry," she said. "Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people civil rights."
Just the year before, Virginians overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting the recognition of gay marriage.
Virginia still isn't for lovers. Not all of them.
