it’s been rather remiss of me to let the 40th anniversary of loving vs virginia go by without a comment.
on june 12, 1967, the us supreme court declared virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, the racial integrity act of 1924, unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the united states. interestingly various statutes remained unenforced in some states until as recently as 2000, with alabama being the last to rescind theirs. i’m including below the statement released by mildred loving on the 40th anniversary of the announcement
Loving for All
By Mildred Loving*
Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement
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.
Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn’t have to fight alone.
Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and
so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the
freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the
Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized
as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free
men,” a “basic civil right.”
My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and
right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep
people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have
lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices
have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they
have a right to marry.
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that
I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, 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. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no
matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to
marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over
others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is 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.
there are blurry photos of my bonnaroo experience, here.
i drove to manchester on friday to see Tool and when they were done jumped in my car and headed home. i’d planned to go back on saturday with vic to see The Police, but plans didn’t quite shake out with vic’s ticket so we didn’t get to see them. c’est la vie.
going to see Tool tonight and hopefully the Police tomorrow. i’m not up to spending three days camping out. wish me luc
if you’re a graphic artist or you know one, you would have seen the London 2012 Olympic logo. if you haven’t, now is the time to take a look.
i’ve always been an advocate of function and legibility over form and design for the sake of design. i think my fundamental issue with this logo is that is smacks of two things, over hipness (design for the sake of design) and design by committee.
the over hipness factor is an attempt to ‘communicate and resonate with the youth’ which throws out design fundamentals like legibility and usability in favour of ‘cool.’ the logo lends itself to motion and animation and i suppose in this era of continuous internet and video access it does have some merit but i believe the hallmark of a good logo is to be immediately identifiable and communicate a message, specifically in a static, one colour environment. i’m also a type purist, not that i don’t appreciate modern fonts but again i believe in legible, easily readable fonts, properly kerned and leaded. the logo is is none of these things. it took me three viewings before i realised the shapes in the background formed a pattern and another number of viewings before i discerned 2012 from LO12.
design by committee has become the norm these days and sadly i believe it is destroying creativity. no one person want to go this looks like crap, start from the top. it’s a bunch of people sitting around in meetings with buzz words and market research and focus groups and before the it gets to people that actually matter, a ton of people have made comments and a good idea gets beaten into submission and more often than not mediocre ideas seems to rise to the top. i’ve worked on projects that get decided on by committee and there comes a point as a designer where you just throw up your hands and go whatever. sadly it seems that is always the thing that gets approved in those situations.
it’s may 25, not as i write this at my house but in another time zone and in some places for at least half the day is done. it is also towel day, a tribute to douglas noel adams. and why a towel you ask? to quote the hitchhiker’s guide:
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
i`m sorry there are people in New Orleans suffering, i`m sorry there are stupid people doing stupid shit in New Orleans, i`m sorry New Orleans is underwater but i`m not moved to do anything. call me cynical, called me mean, call me anything you want to but it`s not going to change anything.
maybe it`s because i`m from the Caribbean and one island or another goes through this same thing every year without the kind of behaviour. Haiti has been hit every hurricane season for the last five, or maybe it was the footage of the pre-Katrina evacuations, where the upper and middle class population of New Orleans cut and ran. look at the pictures now, it`s the poor and the infirm. the people without. and it`s not over for them yet.
these people got fucked by Katrina, they`re getting fucked by their government and by the time this all over, they`re going to bleeding from every orifice, because they`re going to get fucked over again, one way or another.
there is a biblical saying about removing beam from your own eye before you remove the mote from your neighbour`s. when is the aid and succor that is so quick to get sent elsewhere? where are all the people that raced halfway around the world to `assist` after the tsunami? this is not a backwater third world country, this is your own backyard. how hard can it be to get stuff there?
Technorati Tags:
katrina, caribbean, disaster relief
yesterday, hidden amoung the smoke and mirrors of the faux bombs in London, Congress voted to extended the Patriot Act. all under the guise of keeping `us` safe.
this isn`t about keep anyone safe, they don`t even know where to begin doing that. and if you think i don`t know what i`m talking about, talk a read throught my archives about my dealings with the USCIS and see how secure that makes you feel. this about maintaining the illusion of safety and the power to fuck with people.
and i hear the voices from the peanut gallery cry, “No, Not our government.”
Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows:
* Order any person or entity to turn over “any tangible things,” so long as the FBI specifies that the order is part of an authorized terrorism or intelligence investigation.
* Obtain personal data, including medical records, without any specific facts connecting those records to a foreign terrorist.
* Prohibit doctors and insurance companies from disclosing to their patients that their medical records have been seized by the government.
* Obtain library and book store records, including lists of books checked out, without any specific facts connecting the records to a foreign agent or terrorist.
* Obtain private financial records without a court order, and without notification to the person involved.
* Conduct intelligence investigations of both United States citizens and permanent residents without probable cause, or even reasonable grounds to believe that they are engaged in criminal activity or are agents of a foreign power.
* Investigate U.S. citizens based in part on their exercise of their First Amendment rights, and non-citizens based solely on their exercise of those rights. (Naturally, decisions about what constitutes “in part” are left to a secret court, meeting secretly.)
of course none of this affects any of you law-abiding, non-terrorist, readers, but without due process how will you ever know?
i`m so livid right now i can`t get the words out, i`m just going to leave this to stew.
i have a birthday coming up in about a month, give or take a couple of days and i realised that this is going to put me in the closing end of the `youth` demographic. not that i hold much store in these things but it get me thinking.
vic and i have done our part for the population explosion, me more so that her. we don`t have any pets and every week debate whether after we clear up our debt if we want to buy a house or continue renting.
the boychick is more than likely to go to college in about eight years, that would put us in our early 40s and want to travel. so the constant dilemma is, do we buy a house and where, or do we just squirrel the money away we would have spent on a house for us to travel when and where we feel like.
we like nashvegas, but housing prices here are skyrocketing and unless we get in on the cusp of `the next big thing` neighbourhood, i don`t think we can afford to live here. that begs the question, where do we move too and when do we move and can we get our house rented when we`re ready to travel? how will we pay our mortgage? do the questions never end?
are we slackers? i mean, we don`t own a home and don`t seem desirous of doing so, we`re struggling valiantly to be a one car household and the only vestige of being part of the demographic is the debt which we`re not actually increasing but not necessarily eliminating completely at the moment. should we have more ambition? vic is following her life`s dream and i`m supporting her and i`m content, do we need to be more ambitious?
i`ve been listening to a lot of blues lately, not because i`m unhappy, to the contrary i`m incredibly happy these days. it`s like my fasination with the roots of words, listening to the blues is like having a historical education in popular music.
i got a chance to further my education by watching Lightning in Bottle — A one night history of the Blues, that featured performances by people like Clarene `Gatemouth` Brown, Solomon Burke, Robert Cray, Dr. John, Buddy Guy and of course, B. B. King. watching that dvd and listening to the performances you can hear where rock & roll, jazz and swing all started. sometimes as it`s obvious as Hound Dog and other times it`s just a nuance.
i love music, i`ve always said if i could pick a new career path, i would choose sound engineering for live shows. i`ve never had any real aspirations to be a musician, but i love listening to something and hearing the work that was put into it to achieve something that touches you every time you listen to it. at a live show there are so many variables to take into account and no opportunity for do overs
there is hope after all
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN-eGOtBGbg