In order to strengthen the homosexual marriage position, some are starting to draw parallels between the Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia and laws prohibiting homosexual marriage. This year is the 44th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, a case where the Supreme Court repealed laws that prohibited whites from marrying blacks. The injustice represented with those laws, the argument goes, is the same injustice represented with laws against homosexual marriage. This kind of argumentation is standard fare for many poised toward the left, whether it be gender or sexuality issues, and the power behind the argument is not so much the legitimacy of the parallel as it is the emotional punch it imparts. When folks are warned against being the same kind of fodder as slave owners and bigots, we tend to take more seriously their words regardless of their validity.
Glen Stanton has written a good article that points some of the shortcomings of this approach. The conclusion of his article is probably the best part. There he writes:
“This regular refrain of comparison is not just mistaken. It is flat wrong. And not just logically, but morally. It is insidious — a pernicious poisoning of the well of civil discourse — because it powerfully implies that those who oppose same-sex marriage today are merely the most modern version of the bigotry, close-mindedness and hatred that fueled racial segregation of yesterday. As one who takes those injustices very seriously, the comparison is deeply offensive to opponent of same-sex marriage. “
