"This slavery of white women to black beasts will bring this nation to a conflict"

Shakespeare's "Othello" used to be among the hardest plays to stage in America. Although the actors playing Othello were white, they wore dark makeup, so audiences felt "disgust and horror," as Abigail Adams said. She wrote, "My whole soul shuddered whenever I saw the sooty heretic Moor touch the fair Desdemona."

Not until 1942, when Paul Robeson took the role, did a major American performance use a black actor as Othello. Even then, Broadway theaters initially refused to accommodate such a production.

Fortunately, we did not enshrine our "disgust and horror" in the Constitution — but we could have. Long before President Bush's call for a "constitutional amendment protecting marriage," ...

"Intermarriage between Negroes or persons of color and Caucasians . . . is forever prohibited." He took this action, he said, because some states were permitting marriages that were "abhorrent and repugnant," and he aimed to "exterminate now this debasing, ultrademoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy."

"Let this condition go on if you will," Mr. Roddenberry warned. "At some day, perhaps remote, it will be a question always whether or not the solemnizing of matrimony in the North is between two descendants of our Anglo-Saxon fathers and mothers or whether it be of a mixed blood descended from the orangutan-trodden shores of far-off Africa." (His zoology was off: orangutans come from Asia, not Africa.)

In Mr. Bush's call for action last week, he argued that the drastic step of a constitutional amendment is necessary because "marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society." Mr. Roddenberry also worried about the risks...

Mr. Bush is an indicator of a similar revolution in views — toward homosexuality — but one that is still unfolding. In 1994, Mr. Bush supported a Texas antisodomy law that let the police arrest gays in their own homes. Now the Bushes have gay friends, and Mr. Bush appoints gays to office without worrying that he will turn into a pillar of salt.

Social conservatives like Mr. Bush are right in saying that marriage is "the most fundamental institution in civilization." So we should extend it to America's gay minority — just as marriage was earlier extended from Europe's aristocrats to the masses.

Conservatives can fairly protest that the gay marriage issue should be decided by a political process, not by unelected judges. But there is a political process under way: state legislatures can bar the recognition of gay marriages registered in Sodom-on-the-Charles, Mass., or anywhere else. The Defense of Marriage Act specifically gives states that authority.

...the Defense of Marriage Act is itself a reminder of the difficulties of achieving morality through legislation. It was, as Slate noted, written by the thrice-married Representative Bob Barr and signed by the philandering Bill Clinton. It's less a monument to fidelity than to hypocrisy

Said Representative Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia in his proposed amendment. in December 1912.

Excerpts from: Marriage: Mix and Match by By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: March 3, 2004 NY Times







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I did like Bill Clinton as President unlike Mr Bush and his policies.

Note: The 's were not in the published version of today's times.

Wow, very thought provoking article. To think, the exact same arguments used against interracial marriage are being used today. You would think that those opposing gay marriage would open their eyes to these similiarities.

No dessert for you tonite! and you know why.........

There aren't any. Homosexual rights are not even close to being on par to the struggle the Black people have faced. That is a common misconception that the homosexuals want you to buy into for reasons I won't go into here, other than to say they are hoping to ride in on the coattails of the Black movement.

Wow, very thought provoking article. To think, the exact same arguments used against interracial marriage are being used today. You would think that those opposing gay marriage would open their eyes to these similiarities.

Well I am Black and am convinced and not by some trumped agenda from some 20 year book!!

I'm not going to offer my opinion on the actual interracial marriage, although they were forbidden in the Bible.

What I will say is will somebody PLEEEEAASE think of the children. haha.

No. It's true. All kidding aside. Nobody bothers to think of them. They don't fit in anywhere and are thus segregated from their peers. They aren't black and they aren't white. Although they might be able to fit in on some superficial level, they don't have anything to call their own and it just isn't fair to them. There is nothing wrong with them as a person per se. I just feel bad for them. One can only hope they can find a group of friends that is willing to look beyond the superficial, which is exceedingly rare up to adulthood.