Religious Right Activist Defends Bans On Same-Sex Marriage–And Bans On Interracial Marriage

We already knew that the religious right is running out of options to defend bans on same-sex marriage. Just how desperate they are became clear earlier this week, when a religious right activist actually used bans on same-sex marriage to defend the supposed constitutionality of one of the greatest evils of the Jim Crow era–state laws that banned members of different races from getting married.

Brian Camenker with conservative talk show host Susan Smith in 2013 (from Smith's blog)
Brian Camenker with conservative talk show host Susan Smith in 2013 (from Smith’s blog)

Brian Camenker is the president of MassResistance, one of the loudest members of a very exclusive club–social conservatives in Massachusetts. On Monday, he was the guest of American Family Radio drive-time host Sandy Rios. The conversation quickly turned to same-sex marriage. Late in the segment, Canneker admitted something most of us already knew–bans on same-sex marriage are similar to bans on interracial marriage, or miscegenation laws. Incredibly, he actually declared that bans on interracial marriage were indeed constitutional. In essence, he was saying that Loving v. Virginia, the landmark Supreme Court decision that struck down these bans, was wrongly decided. His argument is so unbelievable that it has to be reproduced in full to be believed.

“On the face of it, the Fourteenth Amendment says that everybody will be treated equally, that the law will treat everyone equally. Well, the law treats everyone equally; everyone can only marry someone of the opposite sex. That’s it. There is no Fourteenth Amendment problem unless you stretch it to such ridiculous lengths and twist it around to claim there is. But yes, every person can only marry someone of the opposite sex. Now someone may say that it was the same issue with the miscegenation laws. And that’s true. The miscegenation laws were not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment because they applied to everybody.”

By Camenker’s logic, laws that require you to believe in God in order to hold office don’t violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Ditto with laws mandating racially segregated schools, as long as they are”separate but equal.” Get the picture? As any ninth-grade civics student will tell you, if a law is inherently discriminatory, it’s a Fourteenth Amendment violation even if it applies to everyone on paper. Oh, that’s right–in the minds of Camenker and other wingers, the incorporation doctrine is another example of librul judicial activism run amok.

And that’s before we even discuss the fact that Camenker is defending the indefensible–or at least appears to be doing so. How in the world can anyone in this day and age even suggest that banning someone from marrying who they want just because your loved one is of a different race or ethnic group is anything less than discriminatory? Even if I wasn’t a black man who has dated mostly white women, I’d be outraged at this. Camenker would be right at home in apartheid-era South Africa. After all, from what I remember about the apartheid laws, they were grounded in more or less the same logic. Listen to the whole segment here. Camenker’s ham-handed defense of bans on interracial marriage begins at the 42:45 mark.

Before Rios introduced Camenker, she said–presumably with a straight face–that interracial marriage was never a “moral issue,” unlike same-sex marriage. Apparently Rios either doesn’t know or doesn’t want her listeners to know that for years, segregationists argued that interracial marriage ran counter to both biblical and natural law. It seems to be a natural outgrowth of the old shibboleth that blacks were the “children of Ham” whom Noah curses after the flood. Peggy Pascoe of the University of Oregon, who has extensively studied the history of miscegenation laws, found a Virginia Supreme Court decision that threw out an interracial marriage because “the purity of public morals” demanded that the races be “kept distinct and separate.”

Rios also didn’t tell us that opposition to interracial marriage remained so deep-seated that in some states, miscegenation laws remained on the books for decades after they were all voided by the Loving decision. South Carolina didn’t repeal its ban until 1998, and Alabama didn’t do so until 2000. In Alabama’s case, a whopping 40 percent opposed the repeal in a referendum. It’s not a coincidence that two of the worst places for blacks during Jim Crow were among the last to get these disgraceful laws off the books.

I know that the religious right is trying to win over blacks with some of the same tactics they used to peel off Southern whites who, at least on paper, have no business voting Republican–using moral issues as a wedge. But if they’re going to defend the indefensible the way Camenker is here, it’s going to backfire sooner or later.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.