by the associated pressOne day in the 1970s, Paul Fleischer and his wife were walking through the parking lot of a department store when they noticed a group of people watching them. Fleischer, who is white, and his wife, who is black, were used to “watching”. But this time it was more intense.
“It was the white family staring at us, just poking holes in us,” Fleischer recalled.
That fateful moment came even as any legal uncertainty about the legality of interracial marriage had ended a decade earlier—in 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws banning marriages between people of different races. Gave.
In more than half a century, interracial marriage has become more common and far more accepted. So Fleischer was surprised that Congress felt the need to include additional protections for the Honor of Marriage Act, which goes to the House for an expected final vote this week. This would ensure that not only same-sex marriage, but also interracial marriage is enshrined in federal law.
Fleisher, 74, a retired teacher and children’s book author, attended segregated public schools in the then-Jim Crow South in the 1950s, and later attended what he called “token desegregation” in high school, when four black students were students. In his senior class of approximately 400 students.
He and his wife, Debra Sims Fleisher, 73, live outside Richmond, about 50 miles from Caroline County, where Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were arrested in 1958 and deported from the state. He was accused of marrying outside. was returning to Virginia, where interracial marriage was illegal. His challenge to the law led to Loving v. Virginia, the landmark decision ending the prohibition against interracial marriage.
The Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the Senate last week, has been picking up steam since June, when the Supreme Court overturned a federal right to abortion. The ruling included a concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas that suggested the high court should review other precedent-setting decisions, including the 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage.
While most of the attention has focused on protections for same-sex marriages, interracial couples say they are glad Congress included protections for their marriages as well, even though their right to marry was well established decades ago.
Anna Edwards, a historian who lives in Richmond, said, “It’s a little baffling that the things we’ve made such clear progress in are now being challenged or feel like we really need fortifications to keep them.” Have to.”
Edwards, 62, who is black, and her husband, Phil Vilaito, 73, who is white, have been married since 2006. Both have been community activists for years and said they did not consider interracial marriage a potentially vulnerable institution until the Supreme Court. The Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
“It reminds us all that all the rights we have in this society are conditional – they can be taken away,” Vilaito said. “The fact that Congress had to take up this issue in 2022 should be a stark reminder of that fact for us.”
For young interracial couples, the idea that their right to marry could ever be under threat is a foreign concept.
“Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would need to be protected as an interracial couple,” said Derek Mize, a 42-year-old white attorney. , and their two children.
As a same-sex couple, they were at the forefront of a long struggle for acceptance and felt the euphoria following the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
Still, they see a need for new protections for interracial marriages as well.
“We’re really relieved that this is legislation,” Mize said. “Safety through the courts and protection through the law certainly helps us sleep better at night.”
Mize said that he had to read Loving v. Law in law school. Virginia remembers studying and thought it was “ridiculous” that marriages between people of different races had to be litigated. But after reading the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, he said: “Who knows where this will stop?”
Gregg, a management consultant, said he sees “an added level of protection” for same-sex and interracial marriages given the Respect for Marriage Act — a federal law and Supreme Court ruling supporting their right to marry. We do.
“You have two ways to recover,” he said. “They both have to be taken down for your marriage to fall apart.”
Angelo Villagomez, a 44-year-old senior fellow at the think tank Center for American Progress, said it was “inconceivable” that their marriage could be invalidated. Villagomez, who is of mixed white and indigenous Mariana Islands descent, and his wife, Eden Villagomez, 38, who is Filipina, live in Washington, D.C.
But after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, “it feels like some of the things that are just taken for granted … are under threat,” said Villagomez, whose parents, also a mixed-race couple, The marriage took place in the early 1970s, not long after the Loving decision.
Villagomez worries about what might happen next. “If we don’t put a stop to this backsliding, this country is going to go into a very dark place,” he said.
“I worry about what else is on the chopping block.”
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