I protest.

Ninety-four percent.

Today, "Atrios points out an important fact. He links to the PBS article American Love Stories.

A couple of days ago I wrote,

Remember when the bigots were claiming that allowing "miscegenation" (that is, allowing whites and blacks to marry) would be the end of marriage? They haven't even found any new words for their bigotry. Same shit, different century.

It turns out that the PBS article has a whole lot to say about this particular subject. I didn't realize when I wrote those sentences just how true they are. Here are a few snippets from the article, just to illustrate this:

In the years after the Civil War, it was an eagerness to "preserve the integrity of the white race" by preventing the birth of mixed-race children that in great part motivated states to pass miscegenation laws. Some states, like California, chose to specifically prohibit "intermarriage of white persons with Chinese, Negroes, mulattos, or persons of mixed blood descended from a Chinaman or Negro from the third generation inclusive." In 1869, a Georgia judge blocked the marriage of a white Frenchman and a black woman by saying, "The amalgamation of the races is not only unnatural but is always productive of deplorable results. Our daily observations show us that the offspring of these unnatural connections are generally sick and effeminate." And a Missouri judge in 1883 prevented an intermarriage, because, "It is stated as a well authenticated fact that if the [children] of a black man and white woman, and a white man and a black woman intermarry, they cannot possibly have any progeny, and such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid the intermarriage of blacks and whites."

The ignorant still believe that when a gay couple raise a child, that child will also be gay, as if homosexuality is something that is learned. These people are just as ignorant as those judges, and with less excuse, since at least now the truth is available if you want to look at it. More relevant to the current furor, though, is this bit:

In contrast to the ignorance that muddied such racist rulings, the clearer prejudice of Virginia's Judge Leon Bazile in the famous 1959 Loving case (in which a black man and white woman were sentenced to prison for trying to circumvent Virginia law by marrying in Washington DC) is almost refreshing. "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Maylay and red, and he placed them on separate continents," he said. "And but for the interference with His arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriages."

Compare that assertion with this one from a petition being run by an organization of bigots:

Traditional marriage between a man and woman is the God-ordained building block of the family and bedrock of a civil society.

Or how about, from a source of religious bigotry,

Marriage is ordained by God to be between a man and a woman (Genesis 2:21-24; Matthew 19:4-6). Homosexual marriage is a perversion of the institution of marriage and an offense to the God who created marriage. God forbids and condemns homosexuality, so He clearly is opposed to homosexual marriage.

Or, according to the Southern Bigots Convention,

By upholding God's original plan for human sexuality, [Jesus] automatically condemned any deviation from that standard. We should not need a constitutional amendment to tell us what God has said from the beginning: Marriage is for a man and a woman. Period. I realize it is trite, but it is nevertheless true: The first couple God placed in the Garden was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

In 1959, Judge Bazile believed his words with all his heart, and believed that he was upholding "God's law." Fewer than fifty years later, similar idiots are just as fervent in their advocacy of the same set of beliefs, only this time as applied to gay people. There is no difference between Bazile's declaration and any of the three I quoted.

So, yes, this is the miscegenation battle once again. And the opposition is using the same tired, foolish and deeply ignorant arguments that they used the last time.

Bigots, all of them.

Oh, and the ninety-four percent? That was the percentage of whites in a Gallup poll in 1958 that opposed interracial marriage.