LOVING VS DISCRIMINATION

On May 2, one of the greatest champions and heroes of the American civil rights movement died with little fanfare.  Congress did not declare a national day of mourning.  No stamp was issued.  Her funeral did not draw the media, prominent politicians and civil rights leaders from around the nation.

It should not have been that way.

One could argue that in some ways Mildred Loving was more important to the American civil rights movement than Martin Luther King.

Loving, along with her late husband, was part of the landmark 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving vs. Virginia, that changed the nation.

Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were married in June 1958 in Washington, D.C. She was black; he was white. They then settled in Caroline County, Va., but soon their home--or more specifically their bedroom--was raided by police officers in the middle of the night in a manner not unlike the Gestapo of Nazi Germany.  Police smashed down the front door of the Loving home at 2 a.m., ran through the Loving home and into the bedroom, pulled them out of bed and dragged them off to jail.

A grand jury indicted the Lovings for violating Virginia's law against marriage between whites and nonwhites. The two pleaded guilty and were given a choice: Go to jail for a year or take a 25-year suspended sentence on condition that they leave Virginia and not return. The Lovings opted to leave and moved to Washington.

In 1963, on the heels of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the Lovings launched a court fight to overturn their convictions. In 1967 their case finally reached the Supreme Court, which had no trouble concluding that anti-miscegenation laws violated the Equal Protection Clause barring race-based discrimination.

Last June 12, on the 40th anniversary of her court case, Loving, who had always avoided the limelight, released a statement that read in part:

"Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the 'wrong kind of person' for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights."

For marrying the only man she ever loved, Mildred Loving paid a price: She was arrested, convicted and banished from her home state.

The case of Loving vs. Virginia took place against a legal landscape altered by the demands and victories of the civil rights movement.

Laws supporting segregation were falling; but in 1958, when the Lovings were arrested, half of the states in the nation still had anti-miscegenation laws on the books.  According to Peter Wallenstein, a professor of history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., "The laws deprived Americans of the most intimate of decisions: who would be their spouse."

Ironically, today, in addition to a federal anti-gay act, 26 states have laws, bans and constitutional amendments denying gay Americans the right to build families and lives with the person they love.

When the Supreme Court struck down the anti-miscegenation laws, then Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the opinion 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 racial classification embodied in these statutes . . . is surely to deprive all the state's citizens of liberty without due process of law."

Her family and friends report that it was a source of great sadness for Mildred Loving to see the lessons learned in the 1960s ignored today; and to see Americans still being denied the basic human right to legally build a life with the one person they love.

Of course, the Loving case was underpinned by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.  And although the EPC's language seems clear enough, it was determined that race-based discrimination had to be clearly spelled out, and it was.  As of today, Republicans and most Christian-Americans hold that the Equal Protection Clause does not embrace gay Americans who are denied their civil rights based on higher authorities:  superstition, ignorance and stupidity.

The Equal Protection Clause simply states that no state shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.  It seems clear enough.

Comments

[steve]

Thumbs up Richard. One of your best posts outwith the "Chronicles". I wish I had more english speaking friends to forward it to.

[Alexander]

Another excellent post, Richard. BRAVO!

[Alan down in Florida]

I have long wondered why Loving v. Virginia has been ignored by gay "leaders" as the touchstone for the defense of same-sex marriage. As you say it certainly seems clear enough.

[Billy]

If I remember Constitutional history 105, it is Section 5 of the 14th that causes the hitch. Congress gets to choose how the law is applied. Loving got recognized because Congress had passed the Civil Rights Acts of 64 and 66, Congress showed the direction it was leaning. If a 14th argument was used now it would most likely not be heard by the Supremes, or worse if it were heard, be denied because of the Defense of Marriage Act and the 25 plus laws passed by the state houses that define marriage easily shows legislative intent. (Especially with the current court.)

BTW I think the government should confer civil unions on any two consenting adults, and let religion keep marriage. I don’t want the title, I want the access.