A Straight Couple Gave LGBTQ+ People the Right to Marry

On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court told sixteen states they couldn't ban love anymore. When Richard and Mildred Loving won their case against Virginia, they didn't just win the right to stay married - they handed us a legal blueprint we'd spend the next half-century turning into our own freedom. This is the story of Loving v. Virginia, and it's the episode for this milestone hundredth episode of This Week in Queer History.

Richard Loving was a white bricklayer from Caroline County, Virginia. Mildred was Black and Native American - Rappahannock specifically. They married in Washington, D.C., where interracial marriage was legal. Five weeks after coming home to Virginia, police raided their bedroom in the middle of the night. The crime: violating the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The judge who sentenced them quoted divine will and natural law to justify keeping the races separate - the exact same arguments that would be thrown at LGBTQ+ people for the next fifty years.

Chief Justice Earl Warren's unanimous 1967 decision established that marriage is a fundamental individual right that cannot be infringed by the state - not the state's right to regulate marriage, not traditional marriage, but the freedom to marry. It would take forty-eight more years to cash that check fully. Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. Windsor in 2013. Obergefell in 2015 - which cited Loving nearly a dozen times. The same constitutional pillars of due process and equal protection that freed the Lovings freed us.

This episode also honors the people we owe: the two young ACLU lawyers who took the case for free, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's playbook for using the Fourteenth Amendment as a battering ram, and Mildred Loving herself - who in 2007, on the fortieth anniversary of the decision, issued a public statement explicitly connecting her struggle to marriage equality for same-sex couples. She didn't have to say that. She could have stayed quiet. And it reflects on what our own generation's legal battles will mean to the queer people who come after us, and why protecting the victories we've already won is as urgent as anything else we're fighting for right now.

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Transcript

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What if one of the most important legal victories for LGBTQ equality came from a straight couple? Happy Pride, everyone! I'm Chris with a K and welcome back to this week in Queer History, where we find hope-filled, inspirational, and strategic moments from queer history that we can use today. This week marks 59 years since the Supreme Court told 16 states they couldn't ban love anymore. When Richard and Mildred Loving won their case against Virginia in 1967, they didn't just win the right to stay married, they handed us a legal blueprint we'd spend the next half century turning into our own freedom. Today we're talking about the Stepping Stones, borrowed victories, and the unexpected allies who built the path to marriage equality. Stories go with love and gleam. Here's the thing about history. Richard Loving was a white bricklayer from Caroline County, Virginia, and Mildred was black and Native American. And they grew up in a small, racially mixed community where, as Richard put it at the time, a few white and a few colored, and as we grew up, we all helped one another. They got married in Washington, DC, in June 1958, where interracial marriage was legal. Then they came home to Virginia. And five weeks later, local police raided their bedroom in the middle of the night. And when Mildred pointed to their marriage certificate hanging on the wall, the officers told them it meant nothing in Virginia. What was their crime? Violating the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made interracial marriage a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. At their trial, Judge Leon Basile gave them a choice: go to prison or leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years. His reasoning, and I quote, Almighty God created the races black, white, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. That was 1958. But something in it sounds awfully familiar to now. Divine will, natural law, the sanctity of traditional boundaries. These are the same arguments that would be thrown at us for the next 50 years. But the Lovings, they took the deal and moved to Washington, DC. But they were miserable. They were cut off from their families, they were struggling in that city. And when their son got hit by a car in Washington's busy streets, they knew they needed to go home. In 1963, Mildred wrote a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy asking for help. And Kennedy forwarded it on to the ACLU. And the ACLU sent it to two young lawyers, Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, barely out of law school, and they both took the case for free. And three years later, they were standing before the Supreme Court. Virginia's lawyer defended the law by claiming it applied equally to both races. Both white and black people were punished for interracial marriage. So where was the discrimination? Justice Potter Stewart asked the question that cracked the case wide open. Is there any doubt in your mind that the object of this statute is white supremacy? On June 12, 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous decision, and here's the language that changed everything. Marriage is one of basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival. The freedom to marry or not marry a person of any race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the state. Not the state's right to regulate marriage. Not traditional marriage, the freedom to marry, an individual right, a fundamental right. It took us 48 more years to utilize this moment, but loving was the beginning. In 2003, Lawrence versus Texas struck down sodomy laws, citing Loving's principle of liberty and dignity. In 2013, United States vs. Windsor struck down DOMA, the federal law that refused to recognize same-sex marriages. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that DOMA demeans same-sex couples, echoing the language of fundamental rights that loving established. And then on June 26, 2015, exactly 48 years and two weeks after loving, Obergefell vs. Hodges made marriage equality the law of the land. Kennedy's majority opinion cited loving nearly a dozen times. The same two constitutional pillars, due process and equal protection that freed the lovings, freed us. And this is what really stirs something inside me. In 2007, on the 40th anniversary of the decision, Mildred Loving issued a public statement. Richard had died in a car accident in 1975. So she was speaking alone and she said this. And she didn't have to say that. She could have stayed quiet, but she explicitly connected her struggle to ours, giving her blessing and her name to another civil rights movement. We owe her so much. And we owe Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, two Jewish lawyers from the North who believed in the Constitution enough to take on Virginia for free. We owe the ACLU. We owe Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who wrote the playbook for using the 14th Amendment like a battering ram. And we owe the entire civil rights movement because they proved it could be done. But now I want to talk about what it means for us today, the actions we're taking now that our gay grandchildren will look back on with gratitude. A huge thank you to the members that you see on screen right now. Your support makes this all possible. And it helps me keep digging through archives and sharing the queer history that inspires us. If you'd like to join them, there's a link up above and in the description down below. And if membership isn't in your budget right now, no worries. Subscribing and hitting the bell helps more than you know. Most of all, thank you for being here. Now let's talk about what we can do with all of this that we've inherited. We stand on the shoulders of so many who came before us. I look at Loving versus Virginia, and it's it's wild to think that there was a time you couldn't marry someone because of the color of their skin. And if you look back further, the civil rights movement, the way black Americans were treated before those laws changed, it seems unthinkable now. And before that, the suffragette movement, where women didn't even have the right to vote. If you told a woman in our lives today that they wouldn't be allowed to have a say in who represents them, it's ridiculous. But that was our country just over a hundred years ago. And I have to hold on to this, especially now because we are going through some really hard times. And it feels like we're moving backwards, but I always have to remember that progress has always been two steps forward and one step back. It's a slow slog, but it always leans towards justice, towards equality, towards freedom for all, regardless of skin color, background, religion. I have to believe that there's something inherent in people that pulls us in that direction. So when I look at the fights that we are fighting today, with immigration rights, trans rights, financial equality, and protection for all, I know that these struggles will become the shoulders future generations stand on. And it it might seem out of reach right now or utopian, but it is true. Our small actions right now, showing up, fighting, resisting, hoping above all, they are making the world better. So why are things stepping backward right now? Maybe we got comfortable? We relaxed into the rights we had won and stopped looking around to see who still didn't have them? We stopped examining how our systems protect some and leave others behind. The injustices that we're facing right now, they're just the cracks that we glossed over, and they're just having light finally shone on them. So, what will our gay grandchildren thank us for? I think protecting trans rights. The battles over trans healthcare, bathroom bills, and drag bans, these are all the same fights, the same legal architecture of exclusion. The same arguments that certain people are fundamentally wrong and must be regulated out of existence. If we don't fight for trans people now loudly and fiercely, future generations will ask where we were. I think we have to defend the victories that we've already won as well. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurrence overturning Roe, explicitly called for reconsidering Lawrence, Windsor, and Obergefell. He called them demonstrably erroneous. We cannot assume our rights are safe just because we won them once. I think building coalitions across movements is so important. The connection between loving and Obergefell shows how one civil rights victory creates tools for another. And our liberations are all bound together. I am grateful for the incredible people who stood up and spoke up before us. There would be no Harvey Milk without Martin Luther King. No civil rights movement without the suffragettes. We have to keep fighting and we have to keep moving forward. Because that's what history teaches us. Every freedom we enjoy was fought for by someone who came before. And every action that we take now is a stepping stone for someone else who comes after us. Thanks for joining me on this celebratory trip down memory lane. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please drop a comment below and tell me what you think about our gay grandchildren and what they will thank us for. And if you want to keep the conversation going, you can join our email list using the link up above or down in the description. We get over there and we share history, we ask questions, and we build connection together. And please check out the video popping up right over here for more career history. And until next time, stay strong, stay bold, and keep making history.