When I heard the news of her passing, I wondered what the kids would think. How would today's teens wrap their minds around what she accomplished? Would they unplug their MP3 players long enough to let out a long whistle of admiration? Would they add her to their Facebook friends' list? Would they send out a text message saying L8RG8R H&K (Later, Gator, Hugs and Kisses)?
Surely they would have cheered her in one way or another, because by challenging the Commonwealth of Virginia's law prohibiting interracial marriage, Mildred Loving, as Muhammad Ali was wont to say, shook up the world.
You could say that Henry Ford shook up the world when the first Model T rolled off of the assembly lines in Detroit. You could also say that Nikola Tesla shook up the world when he perfected his polyphase principle of alternating current. Heck, you could even argue that Ali himself really did shake up the world when he became the first athlete to use his celebrity to speak out against social injustice and the Vietnam War.
Mildred Loving, however, took shook to a whole new level of gyration. She changed social perception. She took what was considered by many to be an abomination against God and turned it into something that is today as accepted as chewing gum.
On June 2, 1958, Mildred and her fiance, Richard Loving, drove from their home in Virginia to neighboring Washington, D.C., and were wed. They returned home and moved in with Richard's parents. A month later, men from the local sheriff's office entered the Loving home at 2 a.m. and awoke the married couple by shining flashlights in their faces. They were told that they were in violation of Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Act. Their crime? Mildred was black and Richard was white.
Richard Loving showed the lawmen his marriage certificate. They told him that it held no water in Virginia. The couple was told to dress and then they were taken to jail. They were sentenced to a year behind bars, but the judge suspended the sentence for 25 years, provided they left their home state and did not return for that period of time.
The Lovings moved to the nation's capital, but soon grew homesick. Mildred reached out to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and asked for his help. Kennedy referred the Lovings to the ACLU, which took their case all the way to the Supreme Court.
On June 12, 1967, nearly a full decade after the Lovings had been arrested, the court ruled 9-0 that Virginia's laws against interracial marriage, and those of 15 other states, were unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the following opinion in favor of the decision:
"To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as racial classification embodied in these statutes ... is surely to deprive all the state's citizens of liberty without due process of law."
And just like that a new era began. In 1970, just a few years after the ruling, there were 65,000 black/white interracial marriages in the United States. In 2005, that number had swelled to 422,000. Today, there are 59 million married couples in America. Seven percent, or 4.13 million, of them are interracial unions.
For the kids born in the Loving v. Virginia era, an interracial couple is about as controversial as "Sesame Street." If you sat them down with a senior citizen who spun tales of a childhood devoid of televisions, computers and microwaves, they would draw no distinction between the lack of those modern-day staples and what Mildred Loving made passe. To their minds, a world without either is archaic. You might as well tell them that you grew up in the time before the wheel and fire. You'd be describing an era that they couldn't fathom, and that's the truest marker of progress.
The kids of today live in a world of Seal and Heidi Klum, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and David Bowie and Iman. Because of the inroads made by Mildred and Richard Loving, they are far more apt to judge a partner not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Had she done nothing else in her lifetime, what the brave woman with the serendipitous last name of Loving achieved for all Americans in the year of the Summer of Love would have been enough to cement her rightful place in history. But in the sunset of her life, she did something of equal greatness. She threw down a gauntlet for another embattled segment of society and dared us all to pick it up.
"I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights," Loving wrote in a statement read at the National Press Club.
In putting forth those words, Loving challenged us to break down the last barrier. The only thing preventing same-sex couples from marrying is our indifference and ignorance. It already is decades too late to put aside this foolishness and let folks marry whomever they please.
When I was younger and more naive, I might have been swayed by the "marriage is between a man and a woman" argument. Then I met Rachel and Christy.
Rachel is a childhood friend of my wife. She came out of the closet years ago and fell in love with Christy. They live together in Arizona and have two young boys. They're great people in every sense of the word. They're bright and well-rounded. They're wonderful parents and their two little boys are happy, smart and well-adjusted.
They're just like most happy couples except in one important area. They can't get married and have their union recognized in all communities across America. In a Maury Povich world of psychotic people creating dysfunctional families, there is no sane reason why good citizens like Rachel and Christy can't experience the joy of saying a legally recognized "I do."
I know that some of you are already typing away at your keyboards to offer up some verse in the Bible to condemn gay marriage. You can save yourself the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome and read the words of the judge who originally sentenced the Lovings:
"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. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
Sounds ridiculous now, doesn't it? So will your biblically framed argument against gay marriage 50 years from now. In a 1967 interview with ABC News, Mildred Loving separated the wheat from the chaff with these words:
"I think marrying who you want is a right no man should have anything to do with. It's a God-given right."
Because of the fight inside of Mildred Loving, the kids of today accept interracial marriage as an unquestionable part of society. Maybe the challenge she issued on behalf of gay marriage will have the same effect on the kids of tomorrow. Godspeed.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 20 2008 |