Miscegenatin'!
Alabama became the last state to hold onto its anti-miscegenation law when S. Carolina voters repealed theirs in 1998 with 62% of voters' support. I love that stat - it means that of the people that voted, 38% voted against repealing the law (a number fairly close to our President's current approval ratings - it's probably the same folks).
When Alabama finally did repeal their unenforceable law in 2000, it was hailed as a good symbolic step forward for a state often seen only in its past. The best numbers I could quickly find were 59% in favor of repealing, 41% against. In 2000. The last time an anti-miscegenation amendment was proposed for the US Constitution was, I believe, 1912, but 88 years later, the last state in the Union to officially drop the issue still had almost half their people voting against it.
I guess what this means today is that we need to be patient and persistent in the face of institutionalized bigotry. All the same arguments were made throughout the 1800s and early 1900s by all the same forgettable names about blacks and whites marrying; end of America, chaos, wrath of God, etc., etc. All the same knee-jerk legislative panic swept the country, and in the end, it all amounted to law-abiding people who were once hated and feared getting to do just like the rest of the law-abiding people doing the hating and fearing. If we stick to the same schedule, the last state to drop its gay marriage ban will do so around 2094. By then it will have been legal in most states and probably tolerated even in the ones that considered it technically illegal. It's a shame that it takes us so long to adjust to change, but it's nice to know that eventually there will be people who'll shake their heads and wonder how we could be such backward, ignorant rednecks.
When Alabama finally did repeal their unenforceable law in 2000, it was hailed as a good symbolic step forward for a state often seen only in its past. The best numbers I could quickly find were 59% in favor of repealing, 41% against. In 2000. The last time an anti-miscegenation amendment was proposed for the US Constitution was, I believe, 1912, but 88 years later, the last state in the Union to officially drop the issue still had almost half their people voting against it.
I guess what this means today is that we need to be patient and persistent in the face of institutionalized bigotry. All the same arguments were made throughout the 1800s and early 1900s by all the same forgettable names about blacks and whites marrying; end of America, chaos, wrath of God, etc., etc. All the same knee-jerk legislative panic swept the country, and in the end, it all amounted to law-abiding people who were once hated and feared getting to do just like the rest of the law-abiding people doing the hating and fearing. If we stick to the same schedule, the last state to drop its gay marriage ban will do so around 2094. By then it will have been legal in most states and probably tolerated even in the ones that considered it technically illegal. It's a shame that it takes us so long to adjust to change, but it's nice to know that eventually there will be people who'll shake their heads and wonder how we could be such backward, ignorant rednecks.
posted by jim at 6/09/2006 08:29:00 AM
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