| HOME ARTICLES & COMMENTARY: TOC: The Rise of Church-State Alliances: Imperial Edicts & Church Councils between 306-565: Emperors Constantine through Justinian: The Rise of Protestant Alliances of Church and State: Martin Luther and the German Reformation The Rise of Protestant Alliances of Church and State: Ulrich Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation The Constitution and the Commandments The Classical Temple Architecture of Washington, DC A History of Religious Tests: 312 to 1961 American Founders on Church-State Alliances The Bible and the Quran: A Scriptural Comparison Religion and Women's Suffrage Religious Tradition and Interracial Marriages The Slaves of Jefferson and Washington and the 1782 Virginia Law of Manumission Slavery and the Churches Gays & Social Conservatism as a Coercive Tool of the State Einstein's Religion The Changing Religious Identification of America Moral Hypocrisy in the Bible Belt Ring Species, Evolution and why Intelligent Design isn't science. Who am I : Why this project? : Contact me INFO & EYE OPENERS FROM OTHERS: Court Holdings on Church and State Historical Revisionism: On David Barton's Christian Nation Biblical Archeology Review Special: Captivity, Exodus, and Conquest Sexual Orientation in Nature The Biological Basis of Morality by Edward O. Wilson MEDUSA HEADWEAR  Buy High Quality PolarTech 200 Fleece Headwear From the Author | In 1664 Maryland became the first state to outlaw mixed race marriages. In less than sixty years, another six states passed similar laws. In 1843, Massachusetts, which has been a pioneer regarding both slavery abolition and gay rights, was the first to repeal such a law. The Massachusetts legislature decided that such laws were assaults on human dignity and a denial of equal rights under the Constitution. Forty states have had such laws at one time. In the other states fear, bigotry and violence succeeded in keeping whites, Jews, Asians and blacks from marrying each other. In 1863 a pamphlet appeared in the south that coined a new word, "Miscegenation". It was derived from two latin words that meant mixed races. It was entitled "Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro". The pamphlets aim regarded the producing of children by mixed marriages, which was considered immoral and against God's natural order. Race mixing, even without offspring, was considered unnatural by these same people. The pamphlet's argument favored the interbreeding of races until they were indistinguishable. It claimed that this was the goal of the abolitionists, the Republican party and the Lincoln administration. In those days, and up until the Civil Rights movement, traditionalists and religious fundamentalists were mostly Democrats. Those roles reversed during the 1960s when the Democratic Party became the Party of Lincoln in words and deeds. But the tract was a hoax written by David Goodman Croly, managing editor of the New York World, a Democratic Party paper, and George Wakeman, a New York World reporter. It was written to discredit Lincoln and the abolitionist movement. For a long time afterward traditionalists accused people who ended slavery of advocating miscegenation and the destruction of the white race. Supporters of the Civil Rights movement were attacked in the same manner. The conspiracy theories even had white religious fundamentalists go as far as accusing the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s as being part of a Communist plot to destroy the US through miscegenation. Martin Luther was a commie, they said. After slavery was abolished, mixed race relationships became more common. But laws created and supported by Christian traditionalists prohibited them from marrying. In the Bible belt, traditionalists and fundamentalists made sure mixed race marriages were criminalized and punishable by harsh penaltes. These offenses were made felonies. They were called "Miscegenation Laws" and were similar to the South African Immorality Act and were upheld by the US Supreme Court for a time. It was not the first time the USSC was on the wrong side of an issue. The first challenge to these laws came in 1881. Tony Pace, a black, and Mary Cox, a white, were indicted in a circuit court for living together in a state of adultery or fornication under Section 4189 of the Alabama Code. That code declared: "If any white person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation was a white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not less than two nor more than seven years.' They were tried convicted and each was sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary. An appeal was made on he basis of the fourteenth amendment's clause that made it unlawful for any state to 'deny to any person the equal protection of the laws'. The holding of the circuit court was affirmed by the 1883 US Supreme Court in Pace vs Alabama. The ruling opinion by Justice Fields saw nothing wrong with felonizing an act only when done by people of different races. If the races were the same, it was not a felony. This is the identical attitude taken by the State of Texas in its now unconstitutional sodomy laws. It was lawful for heterosexual couples to engage in anal and oral intercourse but it was a criminal offense if engaged by two men. As you know, this law was overturned on privacy and equal protection grounds. By the 1940s only two of the original forty states with miscegenation laws had removed them. Thirty eight states had laws forbidding such marriages and six of them were by constititional provision. In 1948, in the midst of a majority opposition, the California Supreme Court struck down its ban on interracial marriage as unconstitutional. In Perez v. Sharp the court ruled: "A member of any of these races may find himself barred from marrying the person of his choice and that person to him may be irreplaceable. Human beings are bereft of worth and dignity by a doctrine that would make them as interchangeable as trains." By the reasoning of the religious fundamentalists, these were activist judges. They were legislating from the bench!! But these are people who don't understand the design of the US Government or the intent of the Constitution. Like many rulings opposed by the sleeping majority, the ruling was courageous and correct in a time of controversy. It was morally imperative. The year was 1958. Richard Loving was white and Mildred Jeter was black. They fell deeply in love and wanted to get married. But because in 1958 Virginia still outlawed interracial marriages, they drove to Washington, DC and were married. Virginia's statutes criminalizing interracial marriage carried a punishment of one to five years so it was impossible to marry in Virginia. After they married they moved into a home in Caroline County, Virginia. Mildred Jeter was immediately arrested. Within a year they were both prosecuted and convicted under Virginia's miscegenation law, each receiving a sentence of a year in jail. The Judge promised to suspend the sentence if the couple would leave the state for 25 years. In his opinion the trial judge used religious rhetoric, which should have no place in a serious court's holding, and stated: "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 marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." The Lovings took the deal but it wasn't over as far as they were concerned. They moved to Washington, DC and initiated an appeals process. On November 6, 1963, they petitiioned the state trial court to strike the ruling on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Because action wasn't taken by the state trial judge, the Lovings filed a class action suit on October 28, 1964 at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In January, 1965, the state trial judge denied their motion to vacate their sentences. Once again a fundamentalist thinking judge invoked God's intenton to separate the races. Immediately, they filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. On February 11, 1965, the three-judge US District Court continued their case in order to provide the Lovings with the time needed for them to present their case firstly to that Supreme Court of Virginia. The Lovings would challenge the constitutionality of the law banning mixed race marriages there. |
"..the "freedom to marry" belongs to all Americans; marriage is one of our "vital personal rights" and the right to marry is "essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by a free [people]."This same constitutional power was felt by the states that still had 'sodomy laws' in the Lawrence v. Texas decision by the US Supreme Court in 2003. The Fourteenth Amendment has made the religious conservative's strategies very limited in the rights movements.
In 1970, twelve states, mostly Bible Belt states, still kept these unenforceable miscenegation laws on their books. The last one to be removed wasn't removed until November of 2000 in Alabama. Strange indeed was it was done by ballot referendum because it was a Constitutional measure. Unbelieveably, forty percent of Alabamans still voted against taking the laws off the books even though it was unenforceable. Amazing!
Salon.com commented after that election result:
"In November 2000, after a statewide vote in a special election, Alabama became the last state to overturn a law that was an ugly reminder of America's past, a ban on interracial marriage. The one-time home of George Wallace and Martin Luther King Jr. had held onto the provision for 33 years after the Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Yet as the election revealed -- 40 percent of Alabamans voted to keep the ban -- many people still see the necessity for a law that prohibits blacks and whites from mixing blood."
FURTHER READING:
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/04needs/106us583.htm
http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/marriage.html
http://www.multiracial.com/government/perez-v-sharp.html
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~kdown/loving.html
http://search.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/07/25/p15s1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation
http://www.glad.org/Publications/CivilRightProject/OP3-historyofchange.shtml
http://www.cnn.com/US/9903/12/interracial.marriage/
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