This Valentine’s Day season, I am reminded of Mildred Loving’s and St. Valentine’s acts of justice for the right to love who you want as a fundamental human right.
Since Trump has taken office, I’m worried about the erosion of LGBTQ+ civil rights. As a matter of fact, I feel like the country is moving into a new Jim Crow era, reestablishing discriminatory laws targeting LGBTQ+ Americans, especially our transgender Americans.
I am, however, immensely thankful I reside in Massachusetts, especially if Trump tries to overturn “Obergefell v. Hodges,” the historic US Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, because Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized same-sex marriage in the 2004 “Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health” landmark case, and it’s sticking.
However, that may not be the case for many LGBTQ+ married couples across the country. For example, in a Trumped-up Supreme Court, there is still talk among Christian evangelicals of walking back “Obergefell v. Hodges” without disrupting other precedents on marriage,” Rebecca Buckwaler-Poza wrote in the article “The End of Gay Rights” in the 2017 June issue of Pacific Standard Magazine.
“The Supreme Court can significantly undermine LGBTQ+ rights even without reversing a single case. Right now, the federal prohibition against sex discrimination doesn’t bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity; the Equal Protection Clause affords no specific protections for LGBT people, as it does for members of groups defined by race or nationality,” Buckwaler-Poza stated.
“The Court can strip the rights to intimacy and marriage of their meaning, carving away gradually and masking the magnitude of changes by phrasing them in arcane legal terms.”
However, I am reminded of the tenacity of Mildred Loving, who died in 2008. Mildred Loving (Loving v. Virginia, 1967), who’s often overlooked in the pantheon of African American trailblazers celebrated in February during Black History Month, gained notoriety when the landmark US Supreme Court decided in her favor that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. Her crime was this country’s racial and gender obsession — interracial marriage. Married to a white man, Loving and her husband were indicted by a Virginia grand jury in October 1958 for violating the state’s “Racial Integrity Act of 1924,” which was the same year Dubois’s novel appeared.
Also, Loving understood the interconnection of struggles and supported the same-sex marriage fight.
LGBT+ couples carry on the tradition of the tenacity of love
On June 12, 2007, Freedom to Marry joined with several of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations to hold a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia decision for affirming the freedom to marry as a “basic civil right” of every American.
Lending her support to the commemoration, Mrs. Mildred Loving wrote, “When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, 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. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love 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.”
Loving continued, “I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. I am proud that Richard’s and my name are on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving and loving are all about.”
We’re in the season for Trump 2.0, but love is always worth the fight. Since the beheading of St. Valentine in Rome in the year 270 A.D., marriage has been controlled by heads of the church and the state — and not by the hearts of lovers. When Emperor Claudius II issued an edict abolishing marriage because married men hated to leave their families for battle, Valentine, known then as the “friend to lovers,” secretly joined them in holy matrimony. While awaiting his execution, Valentine fell in love with the jailer’s daughter, and in his farewell message to his lover, he wrote, “From your Valentine.”
Rev. Irene Monroe can be heard on the podcast and standing Boston Public Radio segment “All Rev’d Up” on WGBH (89.7 FM), the Boston affiliate of NPR. Monroe’s syndicated religion columns appear in Bay Windows, Cambridge Chronicle, Dig Boston, Curve and in several cities across the country and in the UK and Canada. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and History UnErased. Also, Monroe is a founder and now member emeritus of several national LGBTQ+ Black and religious organizations. As an activist Monroe has received numerous awards.
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