By Lauren Smith

We look back in horror and shame at the injustices and inequalities of our nation’s past, cringing before a hypocritical history of slavery, segregation, sexism, and limited suffrage. To many of us the widespread, institutionalized bigotry that created and sustained these inequalities is almost incomprehensible. We simply cannot understand how Americans could have so brutally and blatantly suppressed and discriminated against others—and how they reconciled their actions and beliefs to out national promise of “liberty and equality for all.” We accept the Emancipation Proclamation, the 19th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the reparation payments of interned Japanese-Americans as matters of course, necessary redresses, however imperfect, of injustices. Of course these laws had to be passed and actions taken, we think. How could anyone have doubted their necessity, their justness?

I’m not arguing that we have completely extinguished racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination from our society. That argument would be clearly false. We have, however, eliminated many of the legal and institutional barriers that for generations oppressed minorities, women, and host of others. Nothing proves the extent of progress more than the election of an African American president and the close fight waged against him by a woman—two people who a century before would not have been able to even cast a ballot for president. Furthermore, in most social circles over expressions of prejudice are taboo or even unthinkable. While we may never achieve an entirely egalitarian and just society, with each generation we distance ourselves more from the racist and sexist prejudices of the past.

If the news of the Louisiana judge who refused to marry an interracial couple was a testament to the continued existence of racism, the mainstream media and public’s horrified, indignant response to his actions was certainly evidence of how far we have advanced. Judge Keith Bardwell’s barefaced prejudice is no longer acceptable in a 21st century, post-Obama America.

But our outrage and disgust over this event only highlights our national complicity in a similar violation of civil rights—the prohibition of gay marriage.

The Louisiana incident has drawn the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia from musty law archives, thrusting back into public consciousness the judicial decision that eliminated all race-based legal restrictions to marriage in the United States. Although handed down in 1967, Loving v. Virginia has assumed new relevance in 2009 as another group struggles for the right to marry whom they please. Like in any class action suit, the plaintiffs and their personal circumstances are secondary. What matters more is the larger decision drawn from their specific case, the universal assertion of the right to marriage, regardless of race. Furthermore, the Court’s recognition of marriage as “one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival” throws into light the repugnance and injustice of the ban on same sex marriage.

Today we can scarcely believe the Supreme Court even had to defend interracial marriage, so removed are most Americans from the racism that sustained the restriction. Fear of interracial relationships—and even the classification of relationships on racial terms—is largely a relic of the past, existent primarily in a racially-fraught South and among the elderly. Your grandmother may disapprove of interracial marriage, but chances are you don’t even think twice about it. Progress has advanced and discrimination receded—at least in this case.

Our almost universal acceptance of interracial marriage is hard to reconcile with the nation’s consistent rejection of gay marriage. Last week’s approval of Maine’s Proposition 1, prohibiting same sex marriages, is the latest in a well-documented series of referendums that have denied the right of marriage to a significant portion of the population. President Obama and Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, continue to hedge around the issue, either weakly endorsing civil unions or trying to pass the responsibility—the gay marriage hot potato, if you will—to the states. Is this the same nation that so quickly condemned Judge Keith Bardwell for his refusal to marry an interracial couple? Is this the same president who is the product of just such an interracial marriage? Apparently some forms of discrimination are still acceptable—and even institutionalized—in 21st century America.

Significantly, most advancements in civil rights—from Emancipation Proclamation to the 19th Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964—have not be accomplished by referendums, but rather through legislation and executive orders, carried out not by the masses but by elected officials. All of these actions were, of course, initially controversial, opposed—sometimes violently—by large segments of the population. But the government, against these popular pressures, enacted legislation and issued orders. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne to escort the Little Rock Nine into Central High School. Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights of 1964 through Congress. The Supreme Court ruled racial restrictions on marriage to be unconstitutional and affirmed marriage as a civil right. If these issues had been put to a referendum, Central High School may not have been desegregated, civil rights not affirmed, and interracial marriage not defended—at least not for many years. In all these cases, the government, following a vanguard of activists, took action to advance civil rights, despite significant public opposition, and the people followed. The legacy of these laws and orders is clear: today we cannot fathom a society in which woman and minorities cannot vote, interracial couples cannot marry, and water fountains are reserved for a specific race.

America is a democracy, and I do believe the people’s will should be carried out. However, we cannot forget that it is, in fact, a representative democracy. The Founding Fathers built defenses against popular passions—and prejudices—into the Constitution, recognizing that the people might not always know what was best for themselves, others, and the nation as a whole. They hoped, however, that elected officials would do as they saw fit to “establish Justice” and “secure the Blessings of Liberty to [themselves] and [their] Posterity.”

I therefore call on elected and appointed officials, serving in all branches of the government, to take action against the injustices inflicted upon this nation’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender communities. Loving v. Virginia established marriage as a civil right. Now they must extend it to all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation. Hopefully, due to their actions, future generations of Americans will find our prohibition of same sex marriages just as incomprehensible as we find our ancestor’s restrictions on interracial ones.

Smith, a sophomore history major, can be reached at lmsmith@brynmawr.edu.

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