Today is the 40th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia
Today is the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the case that decided once and for all that the state had no compelling interest in preventing a man and a woman of differing races from marrying one another, and that to do so would be in violation of their constitutional rights. From Wikipedia:
The plaintiffs, Mildred Jeter (a black woman) and Richard Perry Loving (a white man), were residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia who had been married in June of 1958 in the District of Columbia, having left Virginia to evade a state law banning marriages between any white person and a non-white person.
Upon their return to Virginia, they were charged with violation of the ban, pleaded guilty, and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. The trial judge in the case, Leon Bazile, echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s 18th-century interpretation of race, proclaimed that:
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 moved to the District of Columbia, and in 1963 began a series of lawsuits seeking to overcome their conviction on Fourteenth Amendment grounds, ultimately reaching the Supreme Court.
Even today, many regard the consentual sexual habits of adults as the ligitimate pervue of the state. There are laws affecting where erotic films can be sold, and laws that prohibit the sale of devices intended to provide sexual pleasure. Whether or not gay men and lesbian women will have access to the same legal concecration of their sexual unions remains an open and divisive question.
None the less, there is no doubt that we are sexually more free than we were 40 years ago.
So drink a toast to the Lovings. Say thanks for their courage and their steadfastness. Because of their willingness to fight, we are all a little more free to love!
