Randall Kennedy is a Professor at Harvard Law School. He is also a Contributing Editor of IntellectualCapital.com.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the most aptly titled case in the history of the United States Supreme Court -- Loving v. Virginia. Loving was the name of a couple that was prosecuted for marrying. Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving committed a felony under state law because, after exchanging wedding vows in the District of Columbia, they lived together as husband and wife in Caroline County, Virginia. Doing so violated the state's antimiscegenation law, The Racial Integrity Act, which prohibited any white person ... to marry any save a[nother] white person." Richard was white and his bride Mildred was black. For their transgression, a Virginia judge sentenced Loving to a year in prison, suspended on the condition that they leave the state and not return for twenty-five years. The judge also lectured them on the importance and justifiabilty of the state's policy, asserting that the fact that "Almighty God" had initially placed the races on different continents "shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." One is tempted to laugh at the judge. The sentiments he voiced, however, decisively shaped peoples lives and were by no means idiosyncratic. A Gallup Poll indicated in 1965 that 42 percent of Northern whites supported bans on inter-racial marriage, as did 72 percent of southern whites.

A background of Loving

The way that the Supreme Court approached the ban on interracial marriage is a revealing reminder of the cautious manner that the tribunal typically deals with volatile social controversies. It encouraged other lawgivers to lead the way. In 1948 the Supreme Court of California ruled that that state's ban on interracial marriage violated the federal constitution's Equal Protection Clause. Yet, even after having invalidated de jure segregation in public schooling in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court was afraid to touch the emotional issue of interracial familial intimacy. In 1955 the Court considered reviewing a conviction under Virginia's ban, but ultimately decided to duck the issue. During the following decade, a dozen states repealed laws prohibiting interracial marriage and the Civil Rights Movement challenged the white supremacist notions from which these prohibitions stemmed. Only near the end of that remarkable era of struggle against racism was the Supreme Court willing to rule on the (un) constitutionality of anti miscegenation laws. In Loving, the Court struck down Virginia's statute on the grounds that it represented merely an "invidious racial discrimination" and that it unjustifiably deprived the defendants of one of the "basic civil rights of man."

What should Loving mean for us today? At a time when many observers question whether America has made any real progress, on the racial front, it is worth recalling that as late as 1967, sixteen states prohibited people from marrying across racial frontiers. Now no such prohibitions exist. This change in legal formalities both reflects and encourages changes for the good in the hearts and minds of Americans.

The slow march over bigotry

Of course, bigotry still places a pall over interracial intimacy. In many locales, mixed couples face a substantial risk that they will be ostracized, harassed, or assaulted by those who feel affronted by a form of loving that they perceive as "unnatural." Some polls suggest that as much as 20% of the white population continues to believe that interracial marriage should be illegal. Opposition, moreover, is by no means unidirectional. Viewing a black's marriage to a white as "desertion" or perhaps a sign of racial self-hatred, a considerable number of African-Americans also oppose mixed marriages, especially those involving black men and white women. The evening that the O.J. Simpson civil trial verdict was announced, a television reporter inquired into the opinion of a black women who indicated her satisfaction with the result. Upon further questioning, it became clear that the source of her feeling was less the acts Simpson was alleged to have committed and more the fact that he had married the white woman he was accused of having married.

Still, despite latent hostility to black-white unions, the fact is that their numbers are growing and that they are steadily gaining acceptability. A remarkable (albeit neglected) landmark in the recent history of American race relations was certainly that moment at which conservative Senators, some of whom were formerly staunch and militant segregationists, fought unstintingly for the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court Justice, despite his marriage to a white woman.

A lesson to be learned

The other significance of Loving today is that it helps to buttress the case for tolerating same-sex marriages. Just as many people once found trans-racial marriage to be a loathsome potentiality well-worth prohibiting, so, too, do many people find same-sex marriage to be an abomination. This frightened, reflexive reaction will likely dissipate in many of the same way that antipathy to the idea of transracial marriage has dissipated. If Loving is any guide, proponents of same-sex marriage should not look to the Supreme Court for leadership, but should instead seek to persuade people on the grounds of the decency of their position. When the task has largely been done, the Court will come along to offer confirmation.