God and nature seem to forbid them

Back in 1874 Andrew Kinney, a black man, and Mahala Miller, a white woman were living together in Virginia. They already had 3 sons. The couple wanted to avoid the charges of unmarried cohabitation, but couldn't marry in Virginia due to miscegenation laws. So they went to Washington DC for the ceremony.

That didn't protect them from prosecution back in Virginia. The case went all the way to the state Supremes which ruled in the case Kinney v. Commonwealth that:

The purity of public morals, the moral and physical development of both races, and the highest advancement of our cherished southern civilization, under which two distinct races are to work out and accomplish the destiny to which the Almighty has assigned them on this continent—all require that they should be kept distinct and separate, and that connections and alliances so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them, should be prohibited by positive law, and be subject to no evasion.

There was a hefty fine and threat of further prosecution. Even so the family stayed in Augusta County, where the 1880 census showed two more sons.

I found this story in the book Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law -- An American History by Peter Wallenstein. The story starts on page 153. A Google search found the story in Google Books.

The law used against Andrew Kinney didn't fall until 1967 and the famous Loving v. Virginia which struck down all miscegenation laws.

I was prompted to search for that story from a blog posting by Laurel Ramseyer which discusses the friend of the court brief in the Calif. marriage equality case written by Howard University School of Law Civil Rights Clinic. The brief compares the arguments against interracial marriage with those against gay marriage and finds that though the words have changed, the ideas are identical. Those ideas include:

* This type of marriage is a threat to social order and to the institutions of marriage and family.

* This type of marriage is unnatural (this is where I saw the mention of the case above).

* This type of marriage is an offense to God.

* This type of marriage is damaging to children.

Yup, those in favor of traditional marriage are using traditional talking-points, arguments that have been around for about 300 years.