Colbert King wrote a fascinating column in the Washington Post the other day about the history of laws against interracial marriage, or miscegenation. He points out that the appeal to natural law, longstanding tradition and religious tenets, so often heard as arguments against gay marriage, were also used in opposition to interracial marriage:
The Georgia Supreme Court in 1869 based its interracial marriage ban on natural law, observing that "the God of nature made it otherwise, and no human law can produce it, and no human tribunal can enforce it."Hear the 1871 Indiana Supreme Court quoting an 1867 Pennsylvania decision: Racial separation is enacted not because of "prejudice, nor caste, nor injustice of any kind, but simply to suffer men to follow the law of races established by the Creator himself, and not to compel them to intermix contrary to their instincts."
The North Carolina Supreme Court in 1869 upheld the state's anti-race mixing law, stating that "the policy of prohibiting the intermarriage of the two races is so well established, and the wishes of both races so well known."
A host of state anti-miscegenation laws -- strongly backed by white public sentiment -- were upheld in state courts well into the 20th century. The reasoning was simple and absolute: Marriage between the races defied the natural order; intermarriage bans had legitimate historical roots and were based on a "divinely ordained" scheme. Conclusion: Government had the right to define marriage as a union of two persons of the same race.
He also points to the lower court ruling that was appealed in Loving v. Virginia, the case that eventually made its way to the Supreme Court and resulted in all state laws banning interracial marriage being struck down. The state judge in that case, whose ruling was overturned, used the same sort of language we hear today against gay marriages:
"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."
Is this not the very same argument we hear so often, that God created the sexes as separate and that His word clearly says that homosexuality is an abomination and therefore gay marriage may justifiably be prohibited? And did the opponents of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned this decision not also condemn the "judicial activism" of "unelected Federal judges" overturning the "expressed will of the people"? It has now been nearly 40 years since the Loving case overturned the miscegenation laws, and reading the arguments given to protect such laws today produces little more than head shaking. Who today outside of the David Dukes of the world would even attempt to defend such absurd reasoning? I predict, once again, that 40 years from now we will look back on the arguments against gay marriage with the same surprised disapproval and wonder how on earth anyone ever uttered such insipid arguments.
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Apropos of this, you might want to take a look at http://queerlinks.com/library/black_white.asp The same silliness that is used today against same-sex marriage was used against inter-racial marriage.
Something that more than a few black people who oppose same-sex marriage apparently want to ignore.
Notes on that argument,
"This argument, the so-called Loving analogy (after Loving v. Virginia) has force, but it overlooks a major distinction between miscegenation laws and the heterosexual norm in marriage. The purpose of miscegenation laws was to proclaim white supremacy. The court made very clear that this is what made miscegenation laws clearly invidious, notwithstanding the state's argument that the law applied equally to the races (i.e., blacks could not marry whites, and whites could not marry blacks).
The heterosexual norm in marriage, however, is not based upon the superiority of one gender over the other. To the contrary, it assumes that each gender is indispensable to society's most basic building block. Miscegenation laws segregate the races; conventional marriage laws integrate the genders. Miscegenation laws assume superior and inferior races; conventional marriage assumes the equal value of each gender."
(Rick Duncan, Professor, University of Nebraska College of Law,
American Lawyer Newspapers Group Inc., The Connecticut Law Tribune,
January 20, 1997 :9)
"The legacy of Loving is threatened today by those who seek to use the courts to accomplish a radical and dangerous agenda - the reordering of marriage to reflect the alleged equal goodness of homosexuality and heterosexuality. As Richard Neuhaus has observed, those who have failed to persuade the public 'that homosexuality is a good or even a morally neutral thing,' now seek to employ constitutional litigation as a tool 'to remake the world in the image of their dissent.'"
(12 BYU J. Pub. L. 239
From Loving to Romer: Homosexual
Marriage and Moral Discernment
By Richard F. Duncan)
Another note on that argument,
"Needless to say, this formulation [of your argument] is clearly not designed to persuade one's opponents. It is a subtle way of telling people that they are no different than a bunch of Jim Crow racists, and ought to be ashamed of themselves - so ashamed that they should get out of the way and leave the definition of marriage to the courts."
(BYU Journal of Public Law
1998 12 BYU J. Pub. L. 201
Playing The Loving Card: Same-Sex
Marriage and the Politics of Analogy
By David Orgon Coolidge)
Note that your argument against natural law and the basic natural categories and typology of Nature is fallacious. (I.e., just because it was abused one time, therefore all similar discrimination must be wrong.)
And if you are correct about discrimination based on basic natural categories being incorrect because people once included race in their discriminations then discrimination against pedophilia (natural categories, child and adult), zoophilia (human and animal), incest (familial and non), etc., also are undermined or wrong. Supposedly they would be wrong because, "Well, once people made discriminations based on people's race as a natural category, so that proves that pedophilia is okay." Etc.
Also, note that the issue of racism was overcome by an appeal to basic natural categories (human and animal) and doing away with blurring the distinction between them. It was not based on the indiscriminate and perverse radical egalitarianism typical to the Left.
E.g., the abolitionist movement that appealed to basic natural categories and typology, which is similar to the Natural Law of the Declaration. As you seek to undermine Natural Law, you undermine civilization.
"Something that more than a few black people who oppose same-sex marriage apparently want to ignore."
As well they should, since that is a false and perverse sort of argument.
"The equation of homosexuality with the noble history of civil rights in this country serves only to dilute, distort and denigrate true civil rights."
-- Dr. Anthony Evans
Executive Director
The Urban Alternative
"`Gay rights' cannot be likened in any fashion to the Black struggle for Civil Rights. `Gay rights' is not, nor will it ever be, a Civil Rights issue, but rather a question of morality and individual values."
-- Rev. Gill Ford
Pastor, Salem Baptist Church
Denver, CO
"Skin color is a benign, non-behavioral characteristic. ....Comparison of the two, racial and sexual discrimination, is a convenient but invalid argument."
--Gen. Colin Powell
The Retired Officer, July, 1992
"The Freedom Bus that went to Selma was never meant to go on to Sodom."
--African American church pastor in Kansas City, MO
"If you say human sexual behavior is like race -- not subject to choice -- then it is also not subject to moral judgment ... that's the ultimate goal of this entire movement. To destroy our ability to hold people accountable for their sexual behavior.
...So shall we have to forgo all discrimination against all adulterers now? Shall we forgo all discrimination against people who exploit children? Shall we forgo all discrimination against rapists and people of this kind? Where do you stop in your willingness to say that human sexual behavior is a condition and not a choice? Because, if it's not a choice then we can't hold people morally accountable for it."
--Alan Keyes
mynym at February 16, 2005 03:54 PM
I was actually considering taking your responses seriously, but then I noticed that you at least twice referred to "natural law." "Natural law" is, of course, is a religious fraud--a fraud perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church, and a few "rightist" "libertarians" of the Murray Rothbard strain. Natural law is a fraud. And so I won't bother taking your responses seriously.
If you'd like to post something apropos to my post--i.e, the obvious similarity between the arguments raised by the anti-miscegenists against inter-racial marriage and the arguments raised by those opposed to same-sex marriage against SSM--your comment may be worth responding to. Otherwise, no.
mynym at February 16, 2005 03:54 PM
And, lest I be misunderstood, a citation to a quotation from Alan Keyes, of all people, is an invitation to ridicule.
"I.e, the obvious similarity between the arguments raised by the anti-miscegenists against inter-racial marriage and the arguments raised by those opposed to same-sex marriage against SSM..."
The same arguments about homophiles can be made with respect to pedophiles, zoophiles, necrophiles, etc. That is because each perversion relies on the distinctions between basic natural categories that they pervert, such as male and female, child and adult, human and animal, life and death, etc.
If you say, "Hey, some people used to argue for discrimination based on race as a basic natural category, like natural law....and well, I guess that proves what the argument looks like. Hey, the same type of argument is made against gays. So it must be wrong, since it was wrong then. After all, it's all so...similar, or somethin'."
You have not really said whatever it is that you feel that you're proving with that associative argument. It's rather like saying, "Once, people said some things were wrong, yet they were wrong. Although, they were quite sure of being right. So now it is wrong to say that anything is wrong. I'm quite sure it is wrong!"
Etc.
"...a citation to a quotation from Alan Keyes, of all people, is an invitation to ridicule."
If you can ridicule what he said, then I am interested. If you, as Leftists typically do, cannot focus on the text and the metaphysical but instead will shift to the physical, then I have little use for it. (Other than for the material of satire...do you think are you are good at ridicule?)
At any rate, that was just your way of saying you cannot deal with the truth of what he wrote, correct?
The simple fact is, what Keyes wrote is unavoidably accurate.