for writing about this. She has been much on my mind today and will be as we all fight the good fight for LGBT equality. Seeing her picture yesterday touched me and I'm not sure why. Perhaps because putting a face to such a monumental court decision makes it all the more powerful? I'm not sure. All I know is that we do owe her a moment of silence, and then some.

it is difficult to imagine that interracial marriage was illegal in my lifetime. I hope my kids will someday find it hard to imagine that same-sex marriage was once illegal.

Thanks for this diary.

I think I knew that family when I was growing up. And I never knew this about them. I've got to call Mom now and ask...

reading this decision in one of my husband's law school books. RIP, Mrs. Loving.

I was just talking with my DD about race issues this week.  For her and her classmates, race is a diminishing issue - and mixed race dating and marriage....she finds it odd to even have the conversation.  She was stunned to see how recently the last miscegenation laws were rescinded.

commentary in Newsweek about how few questions there have been in the presidential debates about the Supreme Court, and how unsubstantive they've been.

To me, this is one of the most important decisions that comes to my mind, and one of the things that is interesting about it is that today it is so obviously RIGHT, and yet, it was hardly 'strict constructionism'. Certainly no where in the constitution does it explicitly guarantee the right of different races to marry and I'm sure the Founders would have been fine with such restrictions. But so clearly, the larger spirit of the Constitution demands this result. I'd be interested to hear how McCain views this decision, for example.

The details of the case make its importance even clearer. This wasn't some academic exercise.

http://www.positiveliberty.com/...

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.

We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

I think the best part of all is the incredibly appropriate case name, Loving v. Virginia.