op-ed
Christian Grantham was a student activist in the late 90s and later was a consultant to domestic policy forums for the Clinton Administration as well as events for HRC and GLAAD.
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November 16, 2004

The most common argument in defense of marriage by the Republican party's evangelical base is that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Never mind the fact that the Bible's "5,000 year old institution" of polygamy ridden marriage was rejected by the common sense laws of man.

A more fascinating peek into morally bankrupt uses of the Bible in defense of marriage are found in the equally appalling justifications for a wave of "Racial Integrity Acts," meant to defend marriage from the evils of interracial love.

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.
[Opinion of the Court - 01-06-1959]

That's what the judge told Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving on January 6, 1959 when they pled guilty to interracial marriage. The judge compassionately agreed to not throw them in prison for a year if they agreed to leave Virginia and not return for 25 years.

The Lovings decided they weren't going to let religious zealotry soil the Christian faith and America's constitution with immoral justifications for discrimination. They went to court and won a unanimous decision from "activist judges" on the United States Supreme Court that Virginia's "Racial Integrity Act" was unconstitutional.

In Loving v. Virginia, Chief Justice Warren didn't parse words when he directly equated such tragic laws banning interracial marriage to the bigoted doctrine of White Supremacy.

In upholding the constitutionality of these provisions in the decision below, the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia referred to its 1955 decision in Naim v. Naim as stating the reasons supporting the validity of these laws. In Naim, the state court concluded that the State's legitimate purposes were "to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens," and to prevent "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride," obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy.
[Opinion of the Court - 06-12-1967]

To most of America, the morality of defending marriage from these shameful laws is as clear today as it was in 1967. The Republican evangelical base that consumes the party, however, wants to enshrine an enduring legacy of discrimination in the United States Constitution. They know the Constitution is an obstacle to their immoral thinking. The only way to change that is to destroy the very founding document that protects our nation's value of fairness and equality, and they hope President Bush and the Republican controlled Congress agrees.

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. (Skinner v. Oklahoma) ...To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. [Opinion of the Court - 06-12-1967]