Proponents of same-sex marriage claimed that legal efforts to clarify the definition of marriage was a ban on same-sex marriage, but that wasn’t the case at all. A ban requires something already be in effect, have a history of practice. Same-sex marriage wasn’t being banned, and that’s a significant difference with the supposed parallel with interracial marriage. That was a ban in fact.
Legal restrictions against interracial marriage was a revision to millennia of human history. Race had never been part of the definition of marriage, so the efforts to ban it were revisionistic, not an effort to conserve and protect marriage as an institution. Of course, same-sex marriage is also revisionistic, overthrowing the definition of marriage for all of human history. And this is, ironically, the actual parallel between the two.
Opponents of same-sex marriage weren’t seeking to ban any practice of common law well-established in human history, such as was the case in banning interracial marriage. It was a revision of current law, just as the efforts to legalize same-sex marriage were revisionistic and revolutionary. In both cases, those that sought to protect the institution of marriage from revision were consistent in the efforts to keep marriage from being fundamentally changed, to maintain a definition well-established in law.
Melinda Penner, Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia
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