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# Attacks on gay marriage: It’s deja vu all over again
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/attacks-on-gay-marriage-its-deja-vu-all-over-again/
- Published: 2004-03-04T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:54:45.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Crime, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By John Marciano*

In 1967 the Supreme Court ruled that the unjust laws prohibiting interracial marriage in Virginia and other states were unconstitutional.

In that particular case, a mixed-race couple had been charged with violating the “Virginia Racial Integrity Act.” The judge who sentenced the couple stated, “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 arrangements there would be no cause for (interracial) marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Do the judge’s words remind us of current religious arguments that homosexuals are defying the divine order by marrying each other? Present-day religious reactionaries are the distant cousins of those in the 1960s who claimed that it was morally wrong for blacks and whites to marry each other. Such ignorance and bigotry are with us again.

If we did not suffer from amnesia about what these reactionaries have done in the past, we would be aware of their despicable history of anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism and sexism. With the help of the mass media and spineless politicians, however, they have managed to put a positive spin on their ancient hatreds to the point where many Americans see their stand against gay marriage as representing the moral high ground.

Not once in U.S. history have religious reactionaries taken a position on human rights that is worthy of our respect. They have used God and the Bible to defend slavery and the subjugation of African-Americans, American Indians, Latinos and other racial minorities in the U.S. They have opposed equality for women, again appealing to God and the Bible to justify the pervasive misogyny (hatred of women) that has influenced every social institution in the country.

They have opposed every public effort to improve the conditions of working people in the U.S. — including the formation of labor unions, minimum-wage legislation, child-labor protection, and health and safety regulations.

They have supported every racist war engaged in by the U.S., including the longest of all: The nearly 300-year conflict against Native Americans that commenced in New England in the early 17th century and ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee in South Dakota with the slaughter of 350 unarmed Lakota Sioux — most of whom were women, children and old men. Such genocidal violence has always received the blessing of rightist religious leaders — from the Jerry Fallwells, Billy Grahams and Pat Robertsons of their time.

The long and sordid right-wing religious bigotry comes to the present with attacks on gay men and women who have defied unjust law and customs to declare their love for each other.

If we examine the actual historical record, as opposed to the fairy tales we picked up in schools and the mass media, we would have to ask: How can religious reactionaries who have been dead wrong on every important issue in our history presume to lecture us about right and wrong? How did they pull off one of the great cons in American history, that they stand for compassion, decency and justice?

The religious right has attacked people because of their class, ethnicity, gender and race. Its latest siren song of hatred must be opposed with all the intellectual and moral fiber we have. (John Marciano is the former chair of the New York Human Rights Commission and a Santa Monica resident.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 4, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/030404.pdf?ref=smdp.com)