The 1958 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision declared a Virginia statute prohibiting interracial marriages to be unconstitutional and in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Today, many gay marriage advocates have declared they see remarkable parallels between arguments and reasoning used in the Loving ruling with current arguments in the long-awaited gay marriage ruling that occurred in June 2015.
Here are four of those parallels:
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1. Opponents of interracial marriage argued in Loving that the 14th Amendment – which was designed to protect free blacks in the wake of the Civil War – was never intended to specifically protect interracial couples. Today, opponents of gay marriage also argue that the 14th Amendment was not meant to apply to
gay couples, according to Slate.
2. The Loving ruling allowing for interracial marriages came after the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated schools, as well as after the 1964
Civil Rights Act, NPR reported. This strategic placement allowed for the United States to become more used to the idea of racial equality before officially ruling on the legality of interracial marriages. Likewise, advocates argue, the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage came after gay marriage has been widely and socially accepted in the country.
3. Both the Loving arguments and the arguments that have gone forward in the gay marriage debates speak of marriage as a "fundamental
right," the Richmond Times Dispatch reported, noting that "the Supreme Court has refused to allow mere tradition to justify marriage statutes that violate individual liberties."
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4. The Loving arguments also concerned whether or not children were disadvantaged or harmed by growing up in an interracial home and if the state or the country had a duty to protect children from that potential harm. Likewise, gay marriage arguments today also concern whether or not children who grow up with same-sex parents will be psychologically, emotionally, or socially harmed, Slate said.
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