Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday passed landmark legislation that would codify federal protection for marriages of same-sex and interracial couples, with Democrats securing enough votes to overcome opposition from most Republicans. The Respect for Marriage Act was approved 61-36, with unanimous support from Democrats and 12 GOP votes after defeating a filibuster and rejecting three amendments offered by Republicans who oppose the bill. The measure now returns to the House for a final vote before it can go to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it into law. The Senate vote reflects the rapidly growing public support...

I went to see Robert Redford in "The Old Man and the Gun" for free at the local library. The audience was 80% 70's aged women probably there to see his supposedly last movie. It was in many ways a remake of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" I had two thoughts: 1. It unnecessarily gave a criminal life a glossy favorable review. 2. It interjected an interracial marriage into the story with the cop who finally catches the "hero" having a black wife. Now I have nothing against black and white marriage, but I know something of its history....

For years now, Christians defending the biblical definition of marriage have dealt with a particularly frustrating retort: “Well, Christians used to be against interracial marriage, too,” people will say. Not only is this assertion meant to equate Christian morality with racism, it implies an historical inevitability—that, in a generation or two, Christians will join the march of progress and affirm same-sex relationships, just as they affirm relationships between men and women of different skin colors. America’s very real and shameful history of racial prejudice and violence—and especially the sinful co-option of Christians, clergy, churches, and entire denominations in that history—gives...

In the same-sex-marriage case recently argued in the Supreme Court, the petitioners have claimed a “fundamental right to marry” protected by the Constitution and unmoored from biology, the complementarity of the sexes, or the universal understanding of what “marriage” has meant in every culture in human history until the last 15 years. Their most persistent and compelling comparison of their legal situation has been to the laws that once banned interracial marriage in many states, until they were overturned by the Supreme Court 48 years ago in Loving v. Virginia. But a closer look at that precedent reveals that it...

Jefferson, a member of the gentry of Old Virginia, was always regarded as one of the best and brightest of his generation, a gentleman of the finest intellect, taste, and manners. Although Jefferson loved and was loyal to the Union, he was a Virginian first and an American second; Virginia, Jefferson avowed, was his “country.” This order of allegiance – State over Union, or “Society” over “the State” – was firmly rooted in the Old South. Accordingly, in the emerging conflict between the North and the South, Jefferson sided with his own country. “It is true that we are completely...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) From questions about democracy to positives coming from conflict, social scientists offer different takes. The protests in Ferguson, Missouri, have been described as a mirror into contemporary America, but they are also something else: A crystal ball. Look past the headlines -- the debates over race and police militarization that have surfaced after the killing of an unarmed black youth by a white police officer -- and one can glimpse America's future, some historians and political scientists say. No one is talking about an impending race war or a police state, but something more subtle. Unless Americans re-examine some...

Another stupid media controversy, this one touched off by a characteristically stupid column by the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, not known for the density of his gray matter. The Post man, sort of the epitome of what used to be called bleeding-heart liberals, suggested “conventional” Americans “gag” when they see an inter-racial couple. He was supposed to be writing about the new mayor of New York and his wife. In fact, he was writing about himself and his ilk. The Washington media went into navel-contemplation exercises for several days following and revealed the startling fact that they have no...

I've tried my level damndest to ignore the latest Richard Cohen column controversy, because life is short and Cohen will stumble into another racial contretemps within six weeks or so. And I don't like the idea of a columnist being Mau-Mau'd out of a job because he's a casual bigot. The smarmy-sounding Fred Hiatt defense—that Cohen "isn’t afraid to take on subjects where culture and politics and emotion overlap"—isn't entirely wrong. Past-their-prime white guys have opinions, too. No, the problem with Cohen's column was that he made an assertion about an entire class of people being racist, and did no...

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NEW ORLEANS – Louisiana's governor and a U.S. senator joined Friday in calling for the ouster of a local official who refused to marry an interracial couple, saying his actions clearly broke the law. Keith Bardwell, a white justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish in the southeastern part of the state, refused to issue a marriage license earlier this month to Beth Humphrey, who is white, and Terence McKay, who is black. His refusal has prompted calls for an investigation or resignation from civil and constitutional rights groups and the state's Legislative Black Caucus. Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal said...

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday. ... In a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, Loving said she wasn't trying to change history — she was just a girl who once fell in love with a boy. "It wasn't my doing," Loving said. "It was God's work."

eHarmony allows clients to discriminate on the race of potential mates. Even though it's only acting on the wishes of its clients, matching services that discriminate by race may violate a statute dating back to the Civil War that prohibits race discrimination in contracting. Think about it. eHarmony is a for-profit company that takes $50 from black clients and refuses to treat them the same (match them with the same people) as some white clients. A restauraunt would be in a lot of trouble if it refused to seat Hispanic customers in a section where customers stated a preference to...

LONDON: Nearly half of British Asians would only marry someone of their own race, according to an ICM-BBC survey on Monday. A total of 44% said they would not consider inter-racial marriage — almost five times higher than the figure for white Britons, of whom 9% said they would only marry within their race. But 53% of Britons with Asian origins said they would not mind a mixed-race marriage, compared to 87% for whites. The survey probed 500 people aged under 34 living in UK who had roots in South Asia.

RICHMOND, Va. — For years, Toinetta Jones played the dating game by her mom's strict rule. "Mom always told me, 'Don't you ever bring a white man home,'" recalled Jones, echoing an edict issued by many Southern, black mothers. But at 37, the Alexandria divorcee has shifted to dating "anyone who asks me out," regardless of race.

A central part of argument used by those who advocate for the legalization of same-sex marriage is based on comparing the issues surrounding the prohibition of these unions to those which once outlawed interracial marriage. These individuals make the case that both instances involved laws which disallowed marriage between certain individuals. And because we would not tolerate the banning of interracial unions, we should not have laws that prohibit two people of the same sex from marrying. While on the surface this seems to be a very compelling argument it is in fact, over simplistic. Furthermore, it ignores facts and...

New Mexico opinion poll on Gay Marriage

Over the past week, I had conversations with two long-time friends who are interracially married, over the ongoing controversy over gay marriage in Massachussetts and San Francisco. One is a next door neighbor in Louisiana, who is a white man married to a Vietnamese woman. The other is a black man from Seattle whom I have known since college, and he is married to a white woman from Alabama, and they are now living in Salt Lake City, Utah (we talked over the phone). Both men are very conservative Christians and very pro-family, and they feel deeply insulted when they...

A caller to Rush Limbaugh today (Friday) compared gay marriage to inter-racial marriage. While it is easy to take offense to the comparison (as Rush did), there is some truthfulness in it. For people of 50 years ago, who who not bigots, what was their major objection to inter-racial and even inter-cultural marriage? What was the first concern they expressed to their children when faced with this possiblity? "What about the children?" And years ago, and in someways, even today, this is a very real concern. Children in inter-racial and inter-cultural homes had a much more difficult social situation to...

Talkin' 'Bout MiscegenationNew hope in America's race relations In the long and tortured racial history of America, there have been few more tortured subjects than inter-racial sex. From earliest times, when Thomas Jefferson had an illicit love affair with a slave, the subject has been oddly taboo. Fear of black male sexuality - and white men's sexual insecurity in comparison - powered some of the most racist thuggery of the past. Many lynchings of black men were occasioned by claims of sex with white women, and formal laws banning inter-racial marriage date back to the 1660s. In fact, it wasn't...