I’ve wondered how close the logic of today’s gay marriage opponents is to the logic of yesterday’s opponents of ‘racial mixing’. It seems that they were very close.

“natural law” objections to gay marriage have antecedents:

In 1871, a Tennessee court based its opposition to interracial marriage on the Old Testament, saying: “It is an institution of God, and a very honorable state … ‘Thou shalt not,’ said Abraham, ‘take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanities,’ …. The laws of civilization demand that the races be kept apart in this country.”

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 *265 such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

In 1871, an Indiana court noted that, “[t]he natural law which forbids their intermarriage and that social amalgamation which leads to a corruption of races, is as clearly divine as that which imparted to them different natures.”

There is a more complete argument, including the quotations I’ve used above.

I hope people that are combating the anti-gay marriage brigade make full use of the fact that they’re using the same bigoted arguments used to suppress interracial relations.