LAST WEEK, Judge Arenda Wright Allen, an Obama appointee to federal district court, struck down Virginia’s constitutional marriage amendment, passed by voters in 2006. She thus cleared the way for homosexual “marriage” in Virginia. Altogether, this was not a surprising development. Indeed, it would have been very surprising if it had turned out otherwise.
Wright Allen, a black woman who was educated at Kutztown University and North Carolina Central University, took just over one week after hearing oral arguments to deliver her 41-page decision. It is not unreasonable to assume that she had made up her mind well in advance.
Wright Allen opened her decision with a strong hint at its conclusion. She quoted from Mildred Loving, in her book Loving All:
“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 should have no business imposing some person’s religious beliefs over others. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”
Loving and her husband, Richard, were the plaintiffs in the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case Loving vs. Virginia, in which they successfully challenged the state’s law against interracial marriage and effectively ended all regulation of interracial marriage, which the court declared as unconstitutional.
Mildred and Richard Loving
Wright Allen argues that morality changes and the history of interracial marriage, which is no longer considered unacceptable, is proof of this. Most Virginians would probably agree that interracial marriage laws were deeply wrong. The fact that Virginians themselves cannot martial any defense of laws against interracial marriage (to defend these laws is not necessarily to argue that they should still be in effect) makes Wright Allen’s point an especially effective argument.
In reminding Virginians of this history, Wright Allen is saying in so many words, “You were bigots once and thus it is not unreasonable to claim that you are bigots now.”
Wright Allen’s ruling essentially asserts that the citizens of Virginia have no good reason to define marriage as it has always been defined everywhere on earth. The grandiosity and hubris that underlies this claim is nothing short of breathtaking. With two bits of legal training, Wright Allen confidently asserts that the parameters of the most fundamental human relationship in history have been irrational and an expression of animus toward an oppressed minority.
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