There are so many clear and thoughtful voices in America. Every once in a while you run into one. Like this comment from a reader of the San Jose Mercury News, who responded to an article published in October. You can read his full comments on Mercury News. Here are a few quotes:
“Marriage changed to support women’s rights:
Beginning with statehood, women of California began pushing suffrage. Suffrage meant more then just the right to vote. It was a demand for equality under the law; property rights, guardianship of their children, and access to education. Many saw this as a threat to the traditional institution of marriage.”
“Marriage changed to support minority rights:
Anti-miscegenation laws were laws that prohibited the intermarriage and sometimes interracial sex of white people and people of different races. The first California law prohibiting marriages was in 1880. California legislature prohibited the issuance of licenses for marriage between a white person and “a Negro, mulatto (mixed ancestry of black and white), or Mongolian (yellow or Chinese).”
The Japanese are added by special legislation in 1909 to the list of those barred from marrying whites.
In 1945, California legislature passed a bill that was signed by Governor Earl Warren, prohibiting marriage between whites and “Negroes, mulattos, Mongolians, and Malays (Filipinos)”.”
“Finally in 1948, the California Supreme Court (activist judges??) ruled in “Perez vs. Sharp,†against the state’s anti-miscegenation laws, stating that they were based on racial distinctions that were “by their very nature, odious to a free people”.
In 1958, the first Gallup poll conducted on the subject of interracial marriage revealed that 94% of whites opposed them. Interracial marriage was still thought to be a threat to the traditional institution of marriage.”
“Will marriage change to support the rights of same-sex couples?”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.