Howard Univ. Lawyers Tell Supreme Court Outlawing Gay Marriage is Like Outlawing Interracial Marriage

Howard University School of Law,  the oldest of any historically black college, has filed an amicus brief encouraging the Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8.

The brief, filed by the Civil Rights Clinic at the school, offers examples which demonstrate that complaints against  gay marriage are nothing more than rehashings of arguments that were used to outlaw interracial marriage, until the issue was finally decided in the case of Loving v. Virginia:

In the Jim Crow era, the denial of marriage rights to interracial couples served as one of the most potent symbols of the less-than-equal status of  African-Americans. As recently as 1967, sixteen states still had anti-miscegenation statutes on their books; the last such statute was not officially repealed until 2000. Opponents of interracial marriage justified criminal prohibitions against such unions by pointing to the purported detrimental effect of interracial births and parentage, the supposed destruction of society if people marry between the races, and the so-called natural law rationale for keeping the races separate.

While public debate over interracial unions has generally died since Loving v. Virginia, today the opposition to marriage for same-s*x couples relies on arguments strikingly similar to those raised in opposition to interracial marriage. Without acknowledging the racial provenance of these discredited arguments, opponents of marriage equality have attacked same-s*x couples as a threat to American society, American families and heterosexual marriage, as an affront to the laws of God and nature, and as a menace to their children.

 The Howard University brief goes on to provide numerous examples which demonstrate that anti-LGBT marriage advocates are using the very same arguments that they used against interracial marriage.

SCRIPTURES

LEVITICUS 20: 13If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

1 CORINTHIANS 1: 19For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

20Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

DEUTERONOMY 7: 3Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. 4For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.