Defense of Marriage, 1959 Edition

We’ve seen that movie too:

“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.”

So ruled the Virginia trial judge following the January 1959 conviction of Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving for marrying against the wishes of the state. The crime of illegal matrimony was a felony, one-to-five; the judge suspended the sentence on the condition that Jeter and Loving profane God’s will elsewhere for twenty-five years.

The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, where family-values Republican Earl Warren — an Eisenhower appointee, Thomas Dewey’s running mate, and three-term California governor — made quick hash of it: “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,” he wrote in 1967. “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”

The Virginia law was overturned as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees American citizens “the equal protection of the laws.”

Richard Loving was killed by a drunk driver in 1975. Mildred Loving succumbed to pneumonia on May 2 this year in Central Point, Virginia. The Lovings had three children, eight grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren.

“My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right,” Mildred Loving said last year on the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision. “I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.”

Loving v. Virginia [FindLaw]

Loving for All [Mildred Loving, 6/12/2007]

57 Comments

The funny part is that Malay aka Polynesian is actually what we look like when we mix all the “races” together.

When my mom gets on my case to marry Korean (again), my smart mouth gets me into more trouble when I tell her that it is my goal to produce blond blue eyed grandkids (not impossible.) Her mouth hits the ground and I walk away.

someone explain to me why this case was heard in the first place.
isn’t it redundant? isn’t this ALREADY IN THE GODAMN CONSTITUTION? isn’t that 1959 virginia decision unconstitutional?
word of the 14th hasn’t made it to virginia yet?
lefty, you’re a con law girl. ‘spain this to me.
‘profane gods will’. pfftt. pisses me off something fierce.
not that i’m so thrilled with marriage right now (4 more days to rat!)
but any of my brothers and sisters of all colors and persuations should fucking be able to marry any human they want. godammit.

@baked:
I think the “thinking” behind that is the Constitution was a whites only thing.

@ManchuCandidate:
last time i looked the constitution didn’t address color or sexual preference pertaining specifically to marriage, or did i miss class that day and didn’t do my homework?

i’m pissed about so many things today, someone put this one away for me. i’m honestly confused and have been for so long. why i’m surly and hate the Law.

@ManchuCandidate: Right – think about the census – whole white persons, and 3/5 of everyone else.

Not to keep harping on the fact that West Wing is the greatest show of all time, but does anyone remember that scene when Chairman Fitzwallace goes into that Roosevelt Room meeting about gays in the military? Anyway, it’s kind of reminding me of that scene.

(I swear I don’t have them all memorized; we’ve been watching them recently.)

@baked: I was so pissed off for the last week that I’ve literally exhausted myself at being angry. I’m trying to channel that anger into something constructive. I plan on documenting our local protests here as part of the (inter)national day of protest Saturday.

Yes, international. People will apparently be protesting at the US-American Consulate General in Toronto. And Parliament Hill in Ottawa (why take it out on Fatty Cheeks, I dunno, since he’s said he won’t try to revoke gay marriage in Canada, or at least until the Conservatives get a majority guvmint). And the consulate in Edinburgh, too.

How organized these things are, I don’t know. The MSM here is not taking ours too seriously right now, and probably won’t cover it if it happens.

For a similarly ridiculous decision see Bowers v. Hardwick – had to do with hot gay sex. Later Bowers, the GA Attorney General, was caught pestorking one not his wife.

http://www.oyez.org/cases/1980-1989/1985/1985_85_140/

My anger today comes from a Greenwald podcast I listened to on the way in … not only can Preznit Bunnypants pardon people (including himself) for crimes they haven’t been charged with, he can do it in secret. Obama can publicize, of course, but holy shit.

@rptrcub:
i’ve been pissed too cubbie. “8” made me ca-razy.
better i channel my anger here than bite off rats face when i see him.
and what are we protesting? OUR RIGHTS!!! to pestork anyone of legal age and consent? and–horrors!–marry them!
teh stoopid gets to me. i was right with you with your anger. it took a little bit away from our glee over prezzie barry.

@blogenfreude:
was that in the patriot act goodie bag?

@baked: Nope – constitutional pardon power goes way back and is (to whip out a law school word) plenary. Nobody can fuck with him. If he does the blanket pardons, the only thing that could be done is a sort of truth and reconciliation thing. Imagine how eager Cheney would be to participate.

And our good friends in the Catolytic Church are ramping up the pederasts to inveigh the Hope ™ on teh fetuses and teh gheyz (that would be the white hierarchy).

@baked: Presndint O (I’m not even bothering with “elect” because it’s clear that W can’t do shit anymore. Only Barry and Paulson run the country now) better make something clear.

Also: another Facebook-organized protest: gay strike on December 10.

i’m going back to bed, wake me when there’s an unexpected pandemic of sanity.

@rptrcub: Don’t forget, the preznit has roughly 70 days left to blow up the world. I gaa-ron-tee you he’ll fuck up a few more things, some major, before he goes off to clear brush full time.

@baked: When you wake up, read about pupsters helping veterans recover from injuries. As long as there are dogs, there is good in the world. This fuels my fantasy of moving to the Oregon coast and training companion dogs full time.

@blogenfreude: His daddy pardoned a cast of thousands the weekend before leaving office.

He might not blow up the world, but he is handing out regulatory favors like there is no tomorrow (hmm, maybe he is going to blow up the world?).

@AARPrick: For the first time, I am mad at these fucking asshole Bishops. They should just back the fuck off the politics, what they are saying amounts to “no catholic can accept a secular government.” Thats not gonna fly.

Oh, hey, speaking of Loving v. Virginia, what a great story this morning, about the Klan initiation/murder case in, where else, Louisiana! Whoo-hooo.

Questions for the day: Why is Andrew Sullivan such a pompous asshole? When will the news stop? When will they all go away and leave me in peace? Why does anybody appear on the O’Reilly show? Now that I’ve been forced to learn Palin’s name how can I unlearn it? If the Mormons follow the angel Moroni why aren’t they called Morons? (HT Tony Kushner: Angels in America).

All right, back to work. The top of Act II won’t write itself.

@SanFranLefty: Thanks for that link. Now I’m sitting here crying.

We don’t deserve dogs.

TJ: Connecticut starts gay marriages today. FSM Bless the land of steady habits, and may He protect the state with His noodly appendages from MassResistance and the Family Institute of CT.

Mormons: nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!

Ich habe Hoffe (GmbH) wieder.

@Prommie sez: “For the first time, I am mad at these fucking asshole Bishops. They should just back the fuck off the politics, what they are saying amounts to ‘no catholic can accept a secular government.’ Thats not gonna fly.”

You know, I have a small personal stake in this now.

Back when Chicago Bureau was a mere cubicle, in the early 1990s, he was (a) a Catholic and (b) an altar-boy. Was so for about four or five years until such time as he came to realize that the Pope wasn’t getting any better, and thus that it would be hypocritical to serve as an altar-boy without agreeing wholeheartedly with the whole Catholic thing. (Left the Church outright a couple of years later. Now a lapsed Unitarian. I like sleeping on Sundays, you know.)

Fast forward to the Saturday before the election, when in a call home, I am informed by Ma Bureau that the former pastor at my church, who I helped at dozens of masses, was hauled in by the five-o. Two boys, Massachusetts, late 1980s. [ADD: the local paper earlier reported that the good people at SNAP have accounts from 13 others in New York State in re this guy.] And my diocese had installed him as the pastor at no less than five different churches, shuttling him along every few years or so, in the years after that. For the first time in a long time, I was made physically ill by something someone had told me.

(Aside: no, nothing happened. But thanks for asking.)

Thus, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops can bite me. (No, no — I take that back.) For real: if they want to be taken seriously on anything political, they had better come clean about everything. And they haven’t thus far. Not by a longshot.

P.S.: Mildred Jeter ain’t the only Jeter in this equation. Derek Jeter came out of an interracial union, you will recall. Therefore, Yankee Fan: roll out, front and center — your services are required for promoting the homosexual agenda. Cheese, crackers, and white wine will be provided. Kthx.

P.P.S.: Life-affirming moment from Sister-in-Chief Maya Soetoro-Ng, in an e-mail sent to friends in re Toot: “When [Dunham] saw the number of flowers that had been sent to her,” Soetoro-Ng writes, ‘she said, ‘Oh my … with all of this hullabaloo, it’s going to be embarrassing if I DON’T die.'”

Sorry for making all y’all cry, but that had to be shared with the world. Painfully awesome.

@blogenfreude: Rachel mentioned last night that it was 69 days — heh heh.

@Benedick: @SanFranLefty:
when i’m at my lowest over the disappointing pace of human evolution, and think our species is worthless, what lifts me up is knowing the infinetly superior dog…loves us! so we must be OK on some level.

vet/lab story cheered me immensly

one of my fantasy jobs is to work at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary(even though it’s in utah) no pay, just board and a hayloft and taking care of the critters all day. they were the first major “no kill” shelter.
a happy memory from my daughter’s childhood is the monthly project of sending our check to them. what started out as a lesson for her–the importance of charity, turned into a passion. they turn no animal away.
they keep the terminal cases comfortable. every life has value. each little 4 legged soul is honored. if you really want to cry, read about what they do there. happy tears. if, when i disappear, that’s where i’ll be.

@baked: They were featured in a very touching story about some of Michael Vitter’s dogs they rescued to save them from being killed.

@mellbell: What also gives me teh Hope is that I ran the data from the LAT database through Excel for some analysis. Georgians gave $72,571 total, but the opponents on 8 far exceeded the supporters — $61,171 to $11,400 .

Here is a very interesting story, think of how much else, the sicence of demography itself, I would think, will be transformed by the implications of this, no? Trend-tracking, where is pokemon selling the most, what authors, musicians, are people interested in, I never thought of all this before.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/technology/internet/12flu.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

@rptrcub: I would hazard a guess that out-of-state donations not originating from the Mormon Corridor skew in that direction. I’ll run the numbers on Kentucky and report back later.

@rptrcub: My donation doesn’t show up either (though someone with a similar last name made a $350 donation against, and he works for Bear Entertainment Distributing — three guesses as to what kind of films they distribute). As for donations from Kentuckians, well, let’s just say that Georgians are deep-pocketed (not to mention more progressive) by comparison: the total was $8,445, with $6,245 against and $2,200 for. That’s a ratio of about 3:1 compared to Georgia’s ratio of about 6:1. (And yes, I really have nothing better to do at work right now.)

@mellbell: I wish the LAT and SFC would allow you to download all of it as a CSV. I’d love to make a national map of this stuff. My data is here, if anyone is interested. No violence or nastiness, please.

@blogenfreude: Well, SHIT. He can pardon people for crimes they haven’t been charged with? (Is there an upside here in that he has to specify the crime he’s pardoning them for? Please tell me that at least there’s that.)

@mellbell: I need to google that firm, most def. Atlanta is probably why there was more money donated, period, since we have the SE capital of gaydom plus business.

@lynnlightfoot: I forget the details, but I think that’s how Ford pardoned Nixon. Your amnesty is pre-approved!

@Benedick: I think GM anathematized all furrin’-sounding auto mfrs.

@mellbell: Ja, wir koennen es!

I know I’m in trouble when I want to correct German grammar. (It’s Ja, das koennen wir! — Sigh (at myself).)

@IanJ: I was on the fence about it myself, but then I stumbled across this.

@mellbell: Crazy Germans. They’re doing a literal translation. Certainly true, that’s a literal translation, but it makes my grammatical heart hurt. Look at the last line in that post — that’s how it would be written if you translate the meaning rather than the words.

Das koennen wir doch schaffen — “Yes, we really can” (Note: “doch” is a fun word to look up; it has no literal translation, but is instead used as a kind of generic emphasis word, sort of like “really” in English.)

@IanJ: It’s not as literal as “Ja, wir koennen” though. Sort of a happy medium, y’know?

can we get back to my outrage over our alleged constitutional rights for a moment?
there are 4 righteous lawyers right here right now.
why have we not risen up to slay them ?

Apparently Science has empirically proven that same-sex heart transplants are more successful, and the best results were from male to male transplants.

Expect a jeebus-crazed constitutional ban tomorrow.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081112/ap_on_he_me/med_heart_transplants_gender;_ylt=ApghYbOu8AFupMOTR8ZSJlSs0NUE

@baked: Because the mills of God grind very slowly, but slower yet are the mills of the law?

We need to understand that the Mormons and other religious groups do have vested interests in defeating marriage equality:

1) Seeing happily married gay couples forces their followers to consciously confront the sexual hysteria that’s a key component of their sects’ social control.

2) It also alleviates them of their self-proclaimed responsibility to improve people’s lives since they have no actual positive agenda.

3) And finally, gay bashing is all the Republicans and Religious Right have left in light of the fact that their social, domestic and economic policies are obscene failures.

So if the churches are wrong about all of these issues, then what else could they be wrong about? In fact, these logical revelations could even cause some of their brighter followers to question why organized religion is relevant to a personal relationship with God in the first place.

good points@Original Andrew:
organized religion is a contradiction in terms.
and they have some balls to be tax exempt for being separate from state.
separate, yeah right.

@Original Andrew: Awww, that’s kind of sweet if you think about it figuratively.

@Benedick: I surmise from his comments that rptrcub reads German as well.

@rptrcub: You read German as well? (Thanks SFL) I have an ulterior motive in asking.

@Original Andrew: They run with this issue for two reasons only, and I am sure there is a Rove memo which lays this out: 1. The fundies hate teh gays, so making this a constantly visible issue energizes the mouth-breathing shithead base; and 2. they think this issue will create a schism, a cleavage line, my poli-sci friends, between teh blacks and the democrats. And if you have been listening to Fox and the right wing echo chamber the last week, you can’t help but see they are reading from a script, a Rove script, that says to keep blaming the victory of prop 8 on teh blacks.

Thats all it is, cynical manipulation of a percieved hot button issue that could sever the democrats from the base of black voter support. Its laughably obvious that a memo has been sent around.

@Benedick: On a perhaps related to your need for German speakers note – are you going to hang out with me and Ewalda when you’re in SF in January?

@Promnight: You’re right that this is a cynical attempt to cleave the ghey-black coalition that helped elect the Unicorn. And MSM doesn’t have its shit together enough to dig out the truth.
Because if you dig down in the numbers, it’s not about black/white support for Prop. 8. It’s about the old/young levels. Young blacks (and Latinos) in CA opposed Prop. 8 at almost the same levels as young Anglo voters. Old whites voted overwhelmingly for Prop. 8, and old blacks and Latinos voted proportionately more for Prop. 8, but it wasn’t within the margin of victory.

@SanFranLefty: Totally. Play of mine is playing Gomorra. You both will be my guest. We will burn in the flames of hell together.

@mellbell: I do. Some translatering. Mostly highlights culled from reviews.

the rat speaks fluent german because the german teacher had huge tits.
why oh why don’t i see a red flag when it waves in my face?
meaning: i am also available for all your translation needs.

@Benedick: Drop me a line at honeydewmellen, yahoo, etc.

@SanFranLefty: @Benedick: Ulterior motive? It was my minor in college. And I do have a bit of the German heritage way back (names changed during WWI), but the Irish-Scottish-English outweighs it.

@rptrcub: Paternal grandma is fully German, paternal grandpa is half, and maternal grandma is half; ergo, I am half German, right? It confused the hell out of the Germans when I told them that. They asked which of my parents emigrated.

I also speak German, because I decided in a bit of sibling rivalry at a young age that it was “my” language (imagine my younger brother and me defiantly clutching our respective pocket dictionaries). Spent a year there just out of HS, and still have a feel for the language, although my vocabulary is best described as “limited” at this point. But when I left, people asked where I was going back to, and I had to patiently explain that yes, I really was American. One thing I definitely get: accents and colloquialisms.

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