Happy Day After “Loving Day”
Until June 12, 1967, Black people who married White people could be imprisoned for a year in Virginia…
Lots of people claim America went astray in the 1960s. The claim is ‘fashionable’ in some circles, partially because likeminded friends may seem to concur, and partially because many people know less about their own history than the clothing on their backs.
(Particularly their cotton clothing.)
Recently, “Loving Day” has been amplified during “Pride Month.” The reasoning in Loving v. Virginia was extended to overturn state laws prohibiting same sex couples from being ‘married.’ (See Obergefell v. Hodges 2015)
Perhaps Obergefell is the ‘final flowering’ of the 1960s legal jurisprudence. Since 2015, Trump appointed three new justices to the Supreme Court, and more than 200 other judges to the lower courts. People who support those picks are either fashionably ignorant or maliciously hope to dissolve same sex marriages.
Obergefell was decided by a 5–4 vote. Three of the five justices who voted to recognize marriage equality are gone. Two of their successors were handpicked for expressing jurisprudential philosophies that rejected the reasoning of Obergefell.
Will the Supreme Court overturn Obergefell? If it does, would that dissolve millions of marriages in America?
Maybe.
But let’s think back to even spookier times, like when Virginia enacted the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924” that Loving v. Virginia overturned in 1967. In the 1920s, Americans lynched hundreds (thousands?) of Black, Brown, and other people across the country. Conditions Native reservation land? African-American cities, villages, and districts burnt down? New segregation adopted in every major city? And meanwhile, LGBTQ communities subjected to extreme cruelty behind the scenes…
That was ‘normal’ in the 1920s. What did Americans (and so many others) do in spite of such brutal injustices? Persist. Some prospered. Many suffered.
From 1924 to 1967 to 2022, Americans changed culturally. Drastically. It wasn’t just in the 1960s — it is with us today, ongoing. Progress? Maybe (from my reckoning, absolutely). But more important than that, the sorts of abuses that were possible 100 years ago simply are not possible today. Even the most ‘reactionary’ judges (like Clarence Thomas) would not disavow his own marriage.
That does not protect us from inventing new abuses. But it ought to relieve some anxiety about exactly what is happening now, and what actually matters.
The Loving decision matters. Millions of lives spent loving one another matter more.
The day after ‘Loving Day,’ let us rededicate ourselves to the task of making a world fit for lovers.
(A good starting point might be making sure that Republican Senators who supported Donald Trump are not reelected…)
