Court's ruling opens new era in civil rights

That connection means the decision is not just a victory for gay and lesbian couples. It is a testament to how the efforts of civil rights lawyers a half century ago not only laid the groundwork for the specific advances of African-Americans, but became a grand heritage that continues to breathe with vibrant hope of a better America.

1948 was the year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Yet, when Andrea Perez, a white woman, and Sylvester Davis, an African-American man, tried to get a marriage license in Los Angeles, the law said, "no license may be issued authorizing the marriage of a white person with a Negro, mulatto, Mongolian, or member of the Malay race."

The law's origins went back a century. It was first meant to prohibit marriages between white people and black people or biracial (black and white) people. The law was amended twice in the early 1900s to add "Mongolians" and then the "Malay race." In fighting Perez and Davis all the way to the state supreme court, lawyers for the Los Angeles County clerk's office dredged up ancient stereotypes that the vast majority of Americans would today deplore.

The clerk defended the license denial on "statistics" that proved the "physical inferiority of certain races." The clerk argued that people who wanted to marry across racial lines were the "dregs of society and that their children would be a burden on society. The clerk quoted the 1927 Supreme Court eugenics law that upheld sterilization to stop the spread of "feeble-minded" children. The clerk argued that the state "may properly protect itself as well as the children by taking steps which will prevent the birth of offspring who will constitute a serious social problem, even though such legislation must necessarily interfere with a natural right."

In language borrowed from another state decision barring interracial marriage, the clerk concluded that mixing races always produces "deplorable results. Our daily observation shows us, that the offspring of these unnatural connections are generally sickly and effeminate and that they are inferior in physical development and strength, to the full blood of either race."

Guess those folks never planned on a 300-yard drive by Tiger Woods. They also missed a few slavemaster rapes and the golden-colored offspring breaking their backs in the fields. It is noteworthy how some crude racists equated race mixing with emasculation, if not the outright creating of homosexuals. "Effeminate?"

The Supreme Court of California shredded all that stupidity. Writing for the majority, Judge Roger Traynor wrote that marriage "is a fundamental right of free men . . . The right to marry is as fundamental as the right to send one's child to a particular school." Traynor said a ban on interracial marriage "is not designed to meet a clear and present peril."

In his concurrence, Judge Jesse Carter wrote, "It is my considered opinion that the statutes here involved are the product of ignorance, prejudice and intolerance." Carter added, "It is immaterial that perhaps only a few would wish to marry persons not of their own race and color. It is material that the few who do so desire have the right to make that choice."

Carter quoted the section of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" that said the most "sacred right" and most "sacred obligation" is to "see to it that the blood is preserved pure," because mixed-race people were "trash." Carter said, "Let us not forget that this was the man who plunged the world into a war in which, for the third time, Americans fought, bled, and died for the truth of the proposition that all men are created equal."

Carter said "prejudice and intolerance are the cancers of civilization." That is part of what was in Margaret Marshall's pen, 55 years later, when she wrote that there was "no rational reason" for a ban on gay marriage. That is what should not be forgotten by those who vow to fight the ruling, such as Governor Mitt Romney and House Speaker Thomas Finneran.

The next time President Bush declares that the SJC's ruling "violates" the "sacred institution" of marriage, he ought to remember how the word "sacred" was stained by the 20th century's most infamous figure. The history of civil rights, whether they be for Andrea Perez and Sylvester Davis in 1948 or today for Julie and Hillary Goodridge, the lead plaintiffs in the gay marriage ruling, shows that there is never a rational reason to support cancer.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.