Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Forty Years Ago Today . . .

Today, I want to honor the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that 31 years later allowed Mr. Random and me to be married in the State of Virginia:


LOVING ET UX. v. VIRGINIA

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

388 U.S. 1

June 12, 1967, Decided

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.

. . .

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. 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.

. . .

Read the full decision here

It is so hard to find someone to love in this world . . . May the next few years bring the end of ALL discrimination in marriage, and may our LGBT brothers and sisters be able to exercise one of the basic civil rights of man, according to the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Here is a picture of me and Mr. Random (having some serious bad-hair days.) We don’t have a better picture yet – so it’ll only be up for a day or so . . .

[Addendum: Today on NPR there was a segment about this: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10889047]

3 comments:

mommanator said...

Congradulations- you two look like you are made for one another, even with bad hair! Keep passing the love!

CS said...

I have always thought it was poetically fantastic that the ast name of that couple was loving. Amen to this post. (Hey, my word verification is utaho, state of too much leniancy for plural marriages!

J said...

I'm with you. Nice post, and thank goodness for that decision. I hope that we keep moving in that direction, and can have same sex marriages if people so desire.