Page 6
July 6, 2016
O PINION
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It was Simple: They Loved Each Other
It’s way past
time to
disarm hate
M arian W right
e delMan
Sunday, June 12, America
woke up to news of the worst mass
shooting in our gun-soaked histo-
ry. A celebration of Latin Night at
Pulse Nightclub in Orlando turned
into a killing field fueled by in-
tolerance, hate and weapons of
war. Now is the time to remember
those who stand up and stand to-
gether in love.
In 1963, young wife and moth-
er Mrs. Mildred Loving decided
to write a letter to U.S. Attorney
General Robert Kennedy about a
“problem” her family was facing.
Four years later Mrs. Loving, who
was black, and her husband Rich-
ard, who was white, made history
when their struggle to have their
marriage recognized in their native
Virginia led to the landmark 1967
Supreme Court ruling in Loving v.
Virginia overturning the remaining
laws in Virginia and other states
that banned interracial marriage.
The couple, who shunned the
spotlight, made it clear they nev-
er set out to be social revolution-
aries. It was simple: they loved
each other, wanted to marry, and
beyond that, as Mrs. Loving said,
“It was God’s work.”
The two first met in the early
by
1950s when she was 11 and he
was 17 in Central Point, Va., the
small community where they
both grew up. They became
young sweethearts, and in
1958, when Mildred became
pregnant, they decided to get
married. They drove to Wash-
ington, D.C., for their marriage li-
cense, and Mrs. Loving later said
she initially thought they were
doing that because less paperwork
was required there. But Richard
already understood something she
didn’t: Getting a marriage license
as a mixed-race couple would
have been illegal and impossible
in Virginia.
Mr. Loving may not have
known how the state would treat
legal interracial marriages that
had been performed elsewhere,
but five weeks after their wedding
the newlyweds received a very
literal rude awakening: Acting
on a “tip,” sheriff’s deputies sur-
rounded their bed with flashlights
at two in the morning demanding
to know why they were there to-
gether. Their reply that they were
husband and wife made no differ-
ence. The Lovings were arrested,
and Mr. Loving was held in jail
overnight while the pregnant Mrs.
Loving was forced to stay for sev-
eral days.
Both were charged with co-
habitation and violating Virgin-
ia’s Racial Integrity Act. Under a
plea bargain, in order to avoid a
year-long jail sentence they were
forced to leave the state and were
prohibited from returning together
for 25 years.
The Lovings settled in Wash-
ington, D.C., and began raising a
family there but quickly missed
the small town where they had
spent their entire lives. Five years
later, inspired by the March on
Washington and the wave of new
civil rights laws, Mrs. Loving de-
cided to write to U.S. Attorney
General Robert Kennedy to ask if
any of the new legislation would
allow them to return to Virginia,
even just to visit. He responded
and suggested the Lovings con-
tact the ACLU, where over the
next few years dedicated lawyers
helped take it all the way to the
U.S. Supreme Court. On June 12,
1967, the Supreme Court justices
ruled 9-0 that Virginia’s law and
all others like it were unconsti-
tutional, and that the freedom to
marry was “a basic civil right.”
Mr. and Mrs. Loving soon re-
turned to their hometown with
their three children. Sadly their
own happiness ended in tragedy in
1975 when Mr. Loving was killed
and Mrs. Loving lost the sight in
one eye in a car accident caused
by a drunk driver. But the Lovings
had paved the way for thousands
of other couples like themselves
who were marrying the people
they loved. Thanks to God’s work
and the Lovings’ love, my hus-
band Peter and I were the very first
interracial couple to be married in
Virginia after the U.S. Supreme
Court decision.
Mrs. Loving never remarried
and lived quietly at her home in
rural Caroline County, Virginia
until she passed away in 2008. But
a year before her death, the widow,
grandmother, and great-grand-
mother sent another groundbreak-
ing letter. This time, it was a pub-
lic statement submitted just before
the Massachusetts Legislature’s
historic vote reaffirming marriage
equality, and read aloud at a 40th
anniversary celebration of the
Loving v. Virginia decision:
“When my late husband, Rich-
ard, and I got married in Wash-
ington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to
make a political statement or start
a fight. We were in love, and we
wanted to be married . . . My gen-
eration was bitterly divided over
something that should have been
so clear and right. The majority
believed that what the judge said,
that it was God’s plan to keep peo-
ple apart, and that government
should discriminate against peo-
ple in love. But I have lived long
enough now to see big changes.
The older generation’s fears and
prejudices have given way, and to-
day’s young people realize that if
someone loves someone they have
a right to marry.
“Surrounded as I am now by
wonderful children and grandchil-
dren, not a day goes by that I don’t
think of Richard and our love, our
right to marry, and how much it
meant to me to have that freedom
to marry the person precious to
me, even if others thought he was
the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me
to marry. I believe all Americans,
no matter their race, no matter
their sex, no matter their sexual
orientation, should have that same
freedom to marry. Government
has no business imposing some
people’s religious beliefs over
others. Especially if it denies peo-
ple’s civil rights.
“I am still not a political per-
son, but I am proud that Richard’s
and my name is on a court case
that can help reinforce the love,
the commitment, the fairness,
and the family that so many peo-
ple, black or white, young or old,
gay or straight seek in life. I sup-
port the freedom to marry for all.
That’s what Loving, and loving,
are all about.”
In a heartbreaking moment of
terroristic hatred fueled by a larger
sea of vitriolic and divisive rheto-
ric, racial and ethnic intolerance,
pervasive hate crimes, prejudice,
and discrimination against gay
people, and guns, guns, guns we
let remain the only unregulated
consumer product despite their
massive lethality, it is critical
to listen again to Mrs. Loving’s
words. We cannot be consumed
by bigotry and violence. It’s way
past time to disarm hate.
Marian Wright Edelman is
President of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.
Public Figures Who Leak Stupidity from Their Lips
Rape is rape,
nothing else is
l aura f inley
Let me be-
gin with a simple
declarative. Noth-
ing, I repeat, noth-
ing, is like being
raped. Rape is a horrific invasion of
the most sacred thing we have, our
bodies. So, it infuriates me to hear
celebrities and politicians mini-
mize rape by equating their life
experiences to being violently vic-
timized, or by using their powerful
public platform to blame victims.
In the latest in public figures who
leak stupidity from their lips, Indi-
an actor Salman Khan attempted to
equate filming a difficult scene with
being a victim of rape, professing
that afterwards he “couldn’t walk.”
Kanye West once compared the
paparazzi following him and his
family to being raped. Likewise,
Charlize Theron, who has been a
by
Stop Rape advocate for the UN,
commented that having her priva-
cy violated was tantamount to rape.
Johnny Depp compared having to
participate in photo shoots with
fans to being raped, while Kristen
Stewart likened fame in general
to enduring sexual assault. And
of course, there’s Donald Trump’s
comment that China has been al-
lowed to “rape our country.”
My least favorite comedian
Daniel Tosh (unless you count
the multiple rapist Bill Cosby as
one still), when called out by a fe-
male audience member for saying
rape jokes are always funny, dou-
bled-down to state “Wouldn’t it be
funny if that girl got raped by, like,
five guys right now? Like right
now?”
Speaking of Cosby, Damon
Ways attempted to defend the man
from rape allegations by pronounc-
ing some of the accusers as “unra-
peable.” Then, of course, there’s
Congressman Todd Akin, with the
infamously moronic comment re-
garding rape and abortion: “If it’s
a legitimate rape, the female body
has ways to try and shut that whole
thing down.” Not to be outdone,
former North Carolina Republican
Rep. Henry Aldridge stated that
when women are “truly” raped
(note the heavy implication that
women falsely claim they are sex-
ually assaulted) “the juices don’t
flow, the body functions don’t
work and they don’t get pregnant.”
Ron Paul similarly called it “honest
rape.”
Clearly none of these fools has
read even a bit of literature on rape,
or they’d know that false reports of
rape are quite infrequent and occur
no more often than do false reports
of other crimes.
More rape myth spewage: In
1988, basketball coach Bobby
Knight compared the stress of a
game to rape, exclaiming ‘I think
that if rape is inevitable, relax and
enjoy it.’’ Just two years later, for-
mer Texas Gubernatorial candidate
Clayton Williams echoed that asi-
nine tidbit. Many celebrities have
also made jokes implying that
drugging someone then having sex
with them is completely accept-
able. Such comments have come
from a diverse array of celebrities,
including Miley Cyrus, The Hob-
bit: The Desolation of Smaug actor
Martin Freeman, and Al Franken.
Far from funny and definitely not
clever, these remarks are definitely
not going to help young men and
women navigate sexual relation-
ships.
Victim-blaming is a common
trope as well. Whoopi Goldberg,
Chrissie Hynde, Serena Williams,
musician Cee Lo Green all sad-
ly, and likely scores more, have
blamed women’s clothing, drink-
ing, or other so-called “inappropri-
ate” behavior for their victimiza-
tion.
Commenting about Rihanna,
Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones
wrote that the artist had a “fashion
sense on stage that surely invites
rape at worst, disrespect at least.”
When actor Shia LaBeouf said he
had been raped years prior, pundit
Piers Morgan thought he needed to
weigh in, calling it, with no proof
at all, “a load of baloney” and in-
sisting that it insults other victims.
Hmm. How about they get to de-
cide if they’re insulted? And when
did he become the rape truth-teller?
It pains me to review the fre-
quency of these comments, some
even issued by people I would
generally have respected. While
some did apologize afterwards,
many used that insincere “I didn’t
mean to offend anyone” garbage.
Surely it can’t be that hard to avoid
equating any minor life annoyance
with being sexually assaulted. And
time has more than come for peo-
ple everywhere to withhold their
personal diatribes about a victim’s
personal appearance or behavior.
Please. Enough, already.
Laura Finley, Ph.D., teaches in
the Barry University Department
of Sociology & Criminology and is
syndicated by PeaceVoice.