Love begets love, love knows no rules; this is the same for all. – Virgil
I once had an uncle (Strike that: God willing, I still have an uncle. He’s still a git, however.) who told me that if I ever married anyone Caucasian, he’d disown me.
Okay, aside from the fact that he doesn’t own me to DIS-own me in any fashion (and isn’t that a stupid idea anyway!? Oh, let me tell you, I didn’t want my father to walk me down the aisle when I finally did get around to getting to a church, but at least he was blessedly silent – nobody asked that “who gives” question. Who the hell owns me but me!?), what kind of a crackpot thing is that to say? Yet he said it, and admittedly, for years I worried about seeing him again. Not that he came to my wedding — in the skateboard park next to the Napa County Justice of Peace’s office – it was a Tuesday, and we didn’t decide to bother anyone from work to stand as witnesses — and not that he even blinked or acted as if he remembered saying anything at all (he was probably high when he said it – he was usually high, which made conversation… well, generally acidic and full of spleen-filled ravings. He was not at all a mellow guy. I’m sure he was much fun drunk, too.) when I introduced them some fifteen years later at my Grandma’s house. It just was one of those stupid, irritating, worrisome things that people say that stupidly, worried me. Not because I was thinking about marrying anyone at the time my uncle said it. It was just… I thought, “Oh no! Another rule! Another way to fail to measure up!” And it was true.
People have said worse to me and about me, of course. I won’t bore you with the increasingly worn tale of the Borg In-laws from Gehenna, but I never knew that grownups who attended church and called themselves …anything remotely religious could call names — horrible names — and their children with them, and then sit and smile in one’s face years later as if they’d never in word or deed impinged upon one’s birth, ancestry, race, sex-drive; as if “because I said it’s over” meant that one now has to forgive, absolve, forget, as if it never happened. Sadly, it was a crash course in racism (and probably in giving grace) that I still haven’t fully absorbed. But I watch my back. There are places I won’t go. There are things I won’t do. I keep my eyes open, and sit with my back to walls. If you’ve got a problem with me and mine, I want to see it, in your eyes, so I can stay the hell away from you, and remember not to put you on my Christmas list. (Oh, yeah, and to light a candle at church for you. I did mention failing to absorb that lesson in giving grace, right?)
Today is LOVING DAY – the day of a landmark anti-miscegenation case in which an ugly State law was struck down in Virginia in 1967. (If you want to play with an interactive map of American history, that lets you fiddle with the dates and see when people of color became free to marry in the US, check this out!)
“Virginia is for Lovers” is what it says on all the tatty t-shirts and mugs for Virginia’s little PR ads. I’ve never believed that anyway (Sorry – any state with that much humidity is not for lovers – it’s for twin beds and AC blasting), and Virginia certainly wasn’t for Loving, at least not for quite awhile. One Ms. Mildred Jeter (an African American lady) and one Mr. Richard Perry Loving (a Caucasian gentleman) were residents of Virginia who married in June of 1958 in Washington DC, leaving
Virginia to evade a state law banning marriages between any white person and a non-white person. Returning home, probably to see family, they were charged with violation of the ban, pleaded guilty, and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. (People have called the judge “an old softy.” Um, yeah. “If you’ll just leave your home, your parents, your loved ones and schoolmates, and never come back for twenty-five years, I’ll let you off for doing something that is your OWN GOD-GIVEN BUSINESS.” Old softy, my bum.) They left… but our doughty heroes Millie and Rich decided not to leave it at that. They fought for years, and the über cool Chief Justice Warren‘s (Go, Warren Commission! Go Miranda Rights!) famous statement on the day that the Lovings won the legal right to marry says it all:
“Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”
And, that, boys and girls, is why today a few savvy people
There are some who labor under the misapprehension that Loving v. Virginia was the last anti-miscegenation law struck down. Not so, dear ones. Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruling made it illegal to enforce that law, the last anti-miscegenation law —
(and incidentally, that word ‘miscegenation’ is SO made up – as are all words are, yes, but we savvy American English speakers like to create new ones when the words we have don’t sound positive enough, pseudo-scientific enough, or negative enough. Think about it: carpet bombing. Soft wool or synthetic plush fibers vs. many people anonymously dead. Whoever coined that one is probably rich.)
— was struck from the books in ALABAMA in the year 2000. (Yes, you heard me.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Alabama joined the 20th.)
A lovely state, I’m sure, and no offense to anyone there – seriously. My great-grandmother lived there on a sharecropper’s land. I’m sure it has some nice spots… probably just none of them are owned by people of color. You’ll all just excuse me if I don’t ever visit.
Candied hearts are nasty. (People, please. Surely someone can make dark chocolate hearts with messages on them? I mean, what is this chalky pastel crap? At least they could make hearts, if not out of chocolate, out of the same stuff those Candy Corns are made out of — sugar, maple sugar, honey and dye, right? Mmmm.) Hallmark Holidays have way too much hype. 
Why not have a day to celebrate the right to love anyone, without the luridly hypersexed drama of the martyred Saint, and the automatically manufactured loneliness of anyone who doesn’t have their Twoo Wuv for that one bleak February day a year? And granted — not everyone can marry here, legally, but the day that the right to love anyone becomes REALLY true, in the GLBTQ community as well, well, there will be that much more to celebrate.