Marriage Is Marriage

I have always thought that if it was wrong to ban interracial marriage that it was wrong to ban same-sex marriage. In Loving v. Virginia the courts ruled that a legal marriage in one state had to be recognized in all the states and that to deny marriage based on race is discriminatory. I always thought that the same should be true for same-sex marriage.

Some hear race echoes in Va. gay marriage ban
Associated Press
By Frederic J. Frommer
April 6, 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — To some people in Virginia, the fight over legalization of same-sex marriage echoes a decades-old battle over the state's 1924 law banning marriage between white and black people.

"You're talking about pure prejudice as the basis of both laws," argued Philip J. Hirschkop, who as a young lawyer in the 1960s represented an interracial couple that successfully challenged Virginia's ban on "miscegenation," or mixing of the races.

But opponents of gay marriage reject the comparison.

"It's a slur and a slander on all those Americans who understand that there is something unique and special about husbands and wives coming together in marriage," said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, a Washington-based group that opposes same-sex marriage.

In the Supreme Court case the Chief Justice said,

"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause," Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the landmark ruling.

I can see no other ruling for same-sex marriages (Not that the Robert’s court cannot rule otherwise) in both court cases involve an inborn characteristic, you have no choice in the color of your skin and you have no choice in your sexual orientation or gender identity.