Gay Marriage and Interracial Marriage

Friday October 29, 2004

Quite a few people have pointed out the parallels between the current bans on gay marriage and America's previous bans on interracial marriage. Opponents of gay marriage have resisted this comparison and it must be granted that the analogy is not perfect, but it is also undeniable that the similarities are far too great and significant to simply shrug off.

Desiree Cooper writes for the Detroit Free Press about her own family's experiences with the bans on interracial marriage:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red and he placed them on separate continents," wrote a Virginia appeals court judge as late as 1965. "The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." Not only was intermarriage considered anti-Christian, it was deemed morally repugnant. "Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit," said Georgia's Sen. Seaborn Roddenberry in 1912. "Let us uproot and exterminate now this debasing, ultra-demoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy."

As a result, my great-grandparents not only never married, they never even lived under the same roof. They managed to raise eight children, but the family never had the legal rights afforded families of married couples. The children could not be given their father's name. Even when the children later married, they hid their father's identity on their marriage certificates.

When Logan died in 1936, Mary and their children stood outside the church, forbidden to attend the funeral. Because he left no will, the sheriff rounded up Logan's possessions and divided them among 22 of even his most distant relatives, purposely excluding his "colored" family. When Mary died three years later, she wasn't buried beside the man she'd loved for 45 years, but in a separate graveyard for blacks.

This is a truly horrible, depressing story about an unjust system — and what's even worse is that something very similar happens today to gay couples. This, however, is what religious conservatives want for society. It's what they wanted for society back when they were able to get away with racial bigotry and it's what they want now today when they can still get away with homophobic bigotry. The targets of hatred and discrimination change, but the basic attitude remains despite the changing of generations. You'd think that younger conservatives would finally learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.

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