my favorite california supremes rumor
Arnold Zwicky
scott safier <sc...@pink-triangle.NO.org.SPAM> reports:
>My favorite rumor so far was posted to the marriage mailing list.
>After receiving the request to halt the SF marriages, a CA Justice
>sent his law clerk to the archives to get materials from the 1940s
>anti-miscegenation case. Upon reviewing the material, the justice
>commented that the briefs by the state attorney general and groups
>seeking injunction were identical to the briefs filed by the state
>in the 1940s if you replace "white" and "black" with "heterosexual"
>and "homosexual".
>Don't know if this is true, but it makes a good story.
it sounds a bit too perfect to be accurate, but the parallels between
anti-miscegenation laws and anti-same-sex-marriage laws have been
noted by lots of people. see, for example, bob herbert's op-ed
column in today's nyt.
w m, noting that bob herbert is black
Kathryn Burlingham
>
> see, for example, bob herbert's op-ed
> column in today's nyt.
>
> w m, noting that bob herbert is black
Very nice piece. I note that he calls the case name of Loving vs
Virginia "delicious". Is that a ping I hear or is it just me?
Feuer
> Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>
>>see, for example, bob herbert's op-ed
>>column in today's nyt.
> Very nice piece. I note that he calls the case name of Loving vs
> Virginia "delicious". Is that a ping I hear or is it just me?
It is delicious. And matches that wonderful irony of the "Virginia is
for lovers" slogan.
David
Kathryn Burlingham
Of course it is. It seemed an unusual word choice for a straight guy,
if he is straight.
Chris Ambidge
>> see, for example, bob herbert's op-ed
>> column in today's nyt.
>>
>> w m, noting that bob herbert is black
speaking of NYT op-eds:
I haven't seen this mentioned in motss-space afore, my apologies
if this is a repeat.
Qoheleth said 3000+yrs ago that there is nothing new under the
sun, and here again is a demonstration of that Truth.
Mr Bush's proposed amendment to the US constitution against the
<gasp> possibility of same-sex marriages has an echo from an
earlier attempt to amend the same constitution against
miscegenenation. I had not heard this afore yesterday, but it
all fits.
This is an op-ed from Wednesday's New York Times, available
online for the next little while at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/opinion/03KRIS.html
text below for them's uz don't like registering.
/\/\/\/ begin NYT text \/\/\/\/\/
Marriage: Mix and Match
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: March 3, 2004
Shakespeare's "Othello" used to be among the hardest plays to
stage in America. Although the actors playing Othello were white,
they wore dark makeup, so audiences felt "disgust and horror," as
Abigail Adams said. She wrote, "My whole soul shuddered whenever
I saw the sooty heretic Moor touch the fair Desdemona."
Not until 1942, when Paul Robeson took the role, did a major
American performance use a black actor as Othello. Even then,
Broadway theaters initially refused to accommodate such a production.
Fortunately, we did not enshrine our "disgust and horror" in the
Constitution but we could have. Long before President Bush's
call for a "constitutional amendment protecting marriage,"
Representative Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia proposed an
amendment that he said would uphold the sanctity of marriage.
Mr. Roddenberry's proposed amendment, in December 1912, stated,
"Intermarriage between Negroes or persons of color and Caucasians
. . . is forever prohibited." He took this action, he said,
because some states were permitting marriages that were
"abhorrent and repugnant," and he aimed to "exterminate now this
debasing, ultrademoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy."
"Let this condition go on if you will," Mr. Roddenberry warned.
"At some day, perhaps remote, it will be a question always
whether or not the solemnizing of matrimony in the North is
between two descendants of our Anglo-Saxon fathers and mothers or
whether it be of a mixed blood descended from the orangutan-
trodden shores of far-off Africa." (His zoology was off:
orangutans come from Asia, not Africa.)
In Mr. Bush's call for action last week, he argued that the
drastic step of a constitutional amendment is necessary because
"marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and
natural roots without weakening the good influence of society."
Mr. Roddenberry also worried about the risks ahead: "This slavery
of white women to black beasts will bring this nation to a
conflict as fatal and as bloody as ever reddened the soil of Virginia."
That early effort to amend the Constitution arose after a black
boxer, Jack Johnson, ostentatiously consorted with white women.
"A blot on our civilization," the governor of New York fretted.
In the last half-century, there has been a stunning change in
racial attitudes. All but nine states banned interracial
marriages at one time, and in 1958, a poll found that 96 percent
of whites disapproved of marriages between blacks and whites. Yet
in 1997, 77 percent approved. (A personal note: my wife is
Chinese-American, and I heartily recommend miscegenation.)
Mr. Bush is an indicator of a similar revolution in views
toward homosexuality but one that is still unfolding. In 1994,
Mr. Bush supported a Texas antisodomy law that let the police
arrest gays in their own homes. Now the Bushes have gay friends,
and Mr. Bush appoints gays to office without worrying that he
will turn into a pillar of salt.
Social conservatives like Mr. Bush are right in saying that
marriage is "the most fundamental institution in civilization."
So we should extend it to America's gay minority just as
marriage was earlier extended from Europe's aristocrats to the masses.
Conservatives can fairly protest that the gay marriage issue
should be decided by a political process, not by unelected
judges. But there is a political process under way: state
legislatures can bar the recognition of gay marriages registered
in Sodom-on-the-Charles, Mass., or anywhere else. The Defense of
Marriage Act specifically gives states that authority.
Yet the Defense of Marriage Act is itself a reminder of the
difficulties of achieving morality through legislation. It was,
as Slate noted, written by the thrice-married Representative Bob
Barr and signed by the philandering Bill Clinton. It's less a
monument to fidelity than to hypocrisy.
If we're serious about constitutional remedies for marital
breakdowns, we could adopt an amendment criminalizing adultery.
Zamfara, a state in northern Nigeria, has had success in reducing
AIDS, prostitution and extramarital affairs by sentencing
adulterers to be stoned to death.
Short of that, it seems to me that the best way to preserve the
sanctity of American marriage is for us all to spend less time
fretting about other people's marriages and more time improving
our own.
/\/\/\// end text /\/\/\/
manly panda
--
"it's much more fun to use goats. you can scrape them off and use them again"
... tim mcdaniel
Tim McDaniel
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/opinion/03KRIS.html
>
>text below for them's uz don't like registering.
>
>/\/\/\/ begin NYT text \/\/\/\/\/
>
>Marriage: Mix and Match
>By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
>
>Published: March 3, 2004
...
>So we should extend [marriage] to America's gay minority just as
>marriage was earlier extended from Europe's aristocrats to the
>masses.
What the Hell is *that*? Has anyone else ever heard such an urban
legend?
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com; tm...@us.ibm.com is my work address