Looking back in time, it is so easy to see how the U.S Supreme Court was right in making many of its decisions. One might say, they were creating laws. Those creations made this country a much better place for all of us to live. Having said that, many of the historic decisions were not well accepted at the time.

40 years ago this week, on June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court said that Mildred Jeter, a black woman and Richard Loving, a white man, could marry. In order to change the law and allow such a marriage, the court relied on the fourteenth amendment. In writing the opinion for the court, Chief Justice Earl Warren said:

"This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment."

Many of the states were outraged with this decision. You see, these laws were created as part of the democratic process. If two people who were of different races made love, it was a misdemeanor as long as they were not married. If they married, it was a felony. The states wanted to protect the sanctity of marriage. The federal circuit court judge cited God in making his decision.

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

Now let us fast forward the story 40 years. This Sunday, in Braintree, a Catholic priest decided to use the pulpit as a political soapbox. He pointed out that in each pew there was a thank-you card that was prepared and ready to be sent to the State Senator who has voted to allow the citizens of Massachusetts to vote on whether gay marriages should be allowed. The Massachusetts Supreme Court already said they should be allowed on constitutional grounds.

Just like 40 years ago, the people trying to prevent gay marriage have no legal problem with people having gay sex. They just don't want them married. Gays can live together. They can adopt children. They just can't get married. Sounds a lot like the same thought process used in the Jeter-Loving case.

Now, back to the priest and what he had to say. He went on the attack against a state representative. From the pulpit, he criticized the rep's decision to vote against allowing the citizens of Massachusetts to vote for a ban on gay marriage. The rep is a lawyer who knows history and the law. He knows that you can not deprive people of their constitutional rights by vote. If that was the case, we would still have anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia today.