A Fascinating Read

The previous post mentions that interracial marriage and the constitutional amendments that were attempted to outlaw interracial marriage were employed well before the civil rights era. The states had long been outlawing interracial marriage, but there were attempts to outlaw these marriages on a national basis too.

Here is an interesting read that covers the whole topic of marriage in the US and how we have been creating and uncreating laws to control marriage since the founding of our country.

On page 630 there is a particularly interesting quote from the California Supreme Court in 1948 when it finally overturned its anti-miscegenation laws in Perez v. Lippold:

Since the essence of the right to marry is freedom to join in marriage with the person of one's choice, a segregation statute for marriage necessarily impairs the right to marry.

Their reasoning was based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This is the same amendment that the anti-interracial marriage folks hoped to undo with a new amendment outlawing such marriages.