Thursday, October 9, 2014

It's Over, It's Done, Get Past It

The rights of gays and lesbians to marry is settled.  Those who oppose gay marriage should settle down and accept it.  Don't spend your time being like Alabama, which didn't repeal its law against interracial marriage until 2000.  It was unenforceable, as all laws against interracial marriage had been overturned by Loving v. Virginia in 1967, but Alabamans apparently wanted to wallow in their racism, and left the law on the books.

And if you look at this map, you'll find that the Supreme Court will probably have to get rid of the same-sex marriage bans in the very same states that kept their interracial marriage bans until Loving overturned them.  And it's worth noting that California is again in the middle of the pack, not the last, but certainly not the first, as its ban on interracial marriage was overturned in a court case in 1948, with the Legislature repealing the law in 1959.  (Many eastern states ended their bans in the 19th century, and a few states never banned interracial marriage.)

But it's not true that if your state didn't have a ban on interracial marriage, it's also progressive on same-sex marriage.  Kansas, for instance, which fought the Civil War for some years before the rest of the country, banned same-sex marriage in 2004.  However, 8 of the 17 states that never had interracial marriage bans also allows some form of same-sex marriage or civil unions.