outsider
Mastermind
offline
Registered: Aug 2003
Local time: 08:13 AM
Location: In the land of rain.
Posts: 910
|
Echoes of racism in gay marriage ban
By Derrick Z. Jackson, 4/2/2004
TO BE SURE, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly is not as tortured about gay marriage as Governor Mitt Romney. Reilly is no friend of gay marriage, preferring, like many politicians, to dump same-sex couples into a civil union caboose. But unlike Romney, who seems to be losing tremendous presidential prospect sleep over the Supreme Judicial Court ruling that will legalize gay marriage on May 17, Reilly momentarily seemed like a gracious loser. When Romney asked Reilly to seek a stay of the Supreme Judicial Court ruling that will make same-sex marriage legal on May 17, Reilly said no.
"Whether the governor likes it or not or whether I agree with the decision, the plaintiffs have won their case," Reilly said. "They're entitled to the right that they've won, and I will not stand in their way."
But then Reilly buckled. He announced that no out-of-state gay or lesbian couple can come to Massachusetts to get married. He cited a 1913 law that forbids marriage to an out-of-state couple if that couple is banned from marriage back home.
The most obvious use of such laws back then was to limit interracial marriages. Massachusetts lifted its own ban on interracial marriage in 1843. But as late as 1952, 30 of the 48 states still had laws on the books banning interracial marriage. It was not until 1967 that the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage for good.
It is ridiculously fitting that today, a similar number of states stand arrayed against gay marriage. "I think there's at least 38 states which do not recognize same-sex marriage," Reilly said. Referring to same-sex couples from those states, Reilly said, "They're not entitled to get married in the state of Massachusetts."
It is appalling to see Reilly hide behind a law meant as a wink and a nod to segregation at the very time he, Romney, and the Legislature swear they are not creating second-class citizenship for gay couples. It should be even more distasteful to remember that such laws were born out of white fears of race-mixing, a fear so potent that it spilled over into lynchings.
That hate was alive in 1958 when Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man, faced police officers who burst into their house in the middle of the night in a small town in Virginia. "What are you doing in bed with this lady?" Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks asked Richard Loving, as recounted in a 1992 New York Times feature. The husband pointed to their marriage certificate on the wall. Brooks said, "That's no good here." The Lovings were jailed for five days. They then faced County Judge Leon Bazile, who berated them by saying: "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." Bazile gave the Lovings the choice of spending a year in prison or going into exile from Virginia for 25 years.
The Lovings moved temporarily to Washington, D.C., and launched a legal challenge that resulted in the 1967 Supreme Court decision ruling Virginia's ban unconstitutional. Like a lot of ordinary people who are thrown into extraordinary circumstances, Loving said she fought the case because "it was thrown in my lap. What choice did I have? We weren't bothering anyone."
As extraordinary as the strength of the Lovings was the stubbornness of the sheriff who arrested them. Even in 1992 Brooks told The New York Times: "I was acting according to the law at the time, and I still think it should be on the books. I don't think a white person should marry a black person. I'm from the old school. The Lord made sparrows and robins, not to mix with one another. . . . If they'd been outstanding people, I would have thought something about it. But with the caliber of those people, it didn't matter. They were both low-class."
The stubbornness of Brooks ought to be instructive for today's politicians. Married gay couples are not bothering anyone. Yet politicians and preachers reach for their holy scriptures to say the Lord made sparrows and robins. Most people would now agree that people like Brooks are old-school fools.
Yet here is Reilly, acknowledging that the victory of gay and lesbian couples within Massachusetts is a done deal at the same time he does in the desires of same-sex couples over the border, resurrecting an old law that represents the worst of American history.
Judge Bazile sent Mildred and Richard Loving into exile. The Lovings came back to storm down the gate. Reilly wants to bar the gate at the Massachusetts border. History predicts that if he stays at the gate too long, he will be flattened.
Boston Globe
I believe that music is the ultimate expression of my soul.
For every facet of my humanity, there is a sound that can touch my soul, in a way that words cannot express. ---Outsider |
|
04-02-2004 08:05 AM
