EMAIL OF THE DAY

“Re: Frum. It seems to me that the apt comparison is: interracial marriage after anti-miscegenation laws were discarded. It has been several decades now, but the number of interracial couples, while growing, is still very, very small. Perhaps Frum and his partisans might therefore argue that it wasn’t necessary to repeal those laws. The argument would make no sense to me, and I’m sure to you, but they might make the argument.” No, they wouldn’t make that argument. But their predecessors did – especially in the states that are now banning gay marriage with almost as much enthusiasm as they once banned inter-racial marriage. And they also demeaned those in inter-racial marriages with the usual sexual stereotypes they now deploy against gays. Plus ca change … In fact, it would be very interesting to do a comparison between those states that were the first to ban gay marriage and those that were the last to hold onto miscegenation bans. I bet there’s a correlation. Virginia, of course, springs to mind. Anyone got the data?