Anti-interracial vs. Anti-same sex
A common statement that pops up in the same-sex marriage debate is the fact the current arguments being used against legalizing same-sex marriage are the exact same ones used against legalizing interracial marriage a few decades ago.
Many “one-man, one-woman” individual rolls their eyes at hearing this over and over again. “That’s illogical,” they say, “Those who were against interracial marriage were clearly wrong because they were against opposite-sex couples that fit into the definition of marriage. Same-sex couples don’t fit into the definition of marriage. There is no comparison between the two issues at all. ”
(To me this sounds like they’re saying “interracial marriages are okay because they aren’t same-sex”, which is weird — it has nothing to do with interracial marriage being right or wrong and everything to do with same-sex marriages being wrong. By the same logic, couldn’t you then argue that “same-sex marriages are okay because they aren’t incestuous”?)
What they should be saying is “That’s illogical. We only know that those who were against interracial marriage were wrong because all the things that they said would happen, didn’t happen. That’s how we know they were wrong. But all the things we’re saying will happen if same sex couples can get married. And no, it doesn’t matter that we have no more proof of this than they did.”
For me, I completely see the comparison. (well, duh) People were against interracial marriage not because it was honestly wrong or unnatural or against god or unhealthy for society — they were against it because they were afraid of those things being true. They were afraid that society would collapse, that god would punish us, that it was wrong and unnatural. Why should we, as a society and a species, trust that those against same-sex marriage aren’t just acting out of fear and ignorance? At the very least, they should find some new arguments.
Anyway, an intensive (read: 5 minute) Google search turned up a PDF comparing arguments made against interracial marriage, for anyone interesting in seeing the similarities. The PDF link itself goes to a dead page (here it is, in case it comes alive again or works for someone else), so I copy/pasted it here from the Google cache.
Among the obvious, this really shows how our language has changed over the years.
ARGUMENTS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF “TRADITIONAL” MARRIAGE: THEN AND NOW
| Arguments against Same-Sex Marriage in 2000 | Arguments against Interracial Marriage from 1948 to 1967 |
| Same-sex marriage runs counter to God’s plan: “If God had intended for same-sex couples to marry, he would have made Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve.” (Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
Interracial marriage runs counter to God’s plan: “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.” (Source: Virginia trial judge upholding conviction of Mildred and Richard |
Same-sex relationships are “unnatural” and “unhealthy.” (Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
“The amalgamation of the races is not only unnatural, but is always productive of deplorable results. The purity of the public morals, the moral and physical development of both races, and the highest advancement of civilization . . . all require that [the races] should be kept distinctly separate, and that connections and alliances so unnatural should be prohibited by positive law and subject to no evasion.”
(Source: Dissenting California Supreme Court Justice objecting to that |
| Homosexuals are “perverted” and “abominable.” (Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
Persons wishing to enter into interracial marriages come from the “dregs of society.”
(Source: Advocates in favor of California’s ban on interracial marriage, quoted in Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 25) |
| If we allow “gay marriage,” then the next thing you know we’ll have brothers and sisters wanting to marry each other, or demands for legalization of polygamous marriages.
(Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
“[If interracial couples have a right to marry], all our marriage acts forbidding intermarriage between persons within certain degrees of consanguinity are void.”
(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 40 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting from a prior court case)) “The underlying factors that constitute justification for laws against miscegenation closely parallel those which sustain the validity of prohibitions against incest and incestuous marriages.” (Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 46 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting “[T]he State’s prohibition of interracial marriage . . . stands on the same (Source: Excerpted United States Supreme Court oral argument transcripts from Loving v. Virginia, from Peter Irons and Stephanie Guitton, eds., May it Please the Court (1993) at 282-283, quoting Virginia Assistant Attorney General R. D. McIlwaine, arguing for Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage) |
| Gay people are free to marry just like anyone else, as long as they marry a member of the opposite sex.
(Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
“Each [party seeking to marry a member of a different race] has the right and the privilege of marrying within his or her own group.”
(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 46 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting |
| Same-sex marriage would precipitate the breakdown of society. (Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
“Civilized society has the power of self-preservation, and, marriage being the foundation of such society, most of the states in which the Negro forms an element of any note have enacted laws inhibiting intermarriage between the white and black races.”
(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 40 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting from a prior court case)) Interracial marriages would be a “calamity full of the saddest and (Source: Tennessee Supreme Court, quoted in Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, May 19,1996) |
| Same-sex couples cannot biologically conceive children together, and therefore can’t satisfy the goals of marriage.
(Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
“When people of the same race marry, they cannot possibly have any progeny, . . . and such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid their marriages.” (Source: A judge in a Missouri case, quoted in Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, May 19,1996) Admin Note: I think it’s supposed to be “people of different race marry”, but I’d to find the original quote to be sure. |
| The founders of Vermont would never have supported same-sex marriage.
(Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
“[A]t the very time the Constitution of the United States was being formulated, miscegenation was considered inimical to the public good and was frowned upon by the colonies, and continued to be so regarded and prohibited in states having any substantial admixture of population at the time the 14th amendment was adopted.”
(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 46 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting from a prior court case)) |
| Allowing same-sex couples to marry would degrade “traditional” heterosexual marriages.
(Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
Allowing interracial marriages “necessarily involves the degradation” of conventional marriage, an institution that “deserves admiration rather than execration.”
(Source: A U.S. representative from Georgia quoted in Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1996) |
| Advocates of same-sex marriage are urging the Legislature to take a step that no state in the country has ever taken. Why should Vermont be the first?
(Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
“[S]uch laws [banning interracial marriage] have been in effect in this country since before our national independence and in this state since our first legislative session. They have never been declared unconstitutional by any court in the land although frequently they have been under attack. It is difficult to see why such laws, valid when enacted and constitutionally enforceable in this state for nearly one hundred years and elsewhere for a much longer period of time, are now unconstitutional under the same constitution.”
(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 35 (Shenk, J. dissenting)) |
| Gay people should not be allowed to marry because [in the United States] they suffer a higher incidence of AIDS than heterosexuals.
(Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
Racial intermarriage should not be allowed because of the physical inferiority and higher incidence of certain diseases among certain races, such as sickle-cell anemia among African Americans.
(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 23-24 and n.5 |
| (summarizing the State’s argument in favor of ban on interracial marriage)) Same-sex marriages have adverse effects on the parties’ children, and those children are apt to suffer stigma. (Source: Vermont House and Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearings, 1/25/00, 2/1/00) |
“It is contended that interracial marriage has adverse effects not only upon the parties thereto but upon their progeny . . . and that the progeny of a marriage between a Negro and a Caucasian suffer not only the stigma of such inferiority but the fear of rejection by members of both races.”
(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 26 and n.5 (summarizing the State’s argument in favor of ban on interracial marriage)) |
