Clearly the makers of these laws understood that marriage was naturally possible for interracial couples. Ironically, these laws were premised exactly on a recognition of childbearing’s centrality to the meaning of marriage; they were all about “mongrelization” and the “amalgamation” of the races. The Supreme Court that struck them down recognized them as a white-supremacist intrusion on a fundamental right to marry of couples who could marry, and who would marry if the law let them alone.
Contrast this with the “bans” on same-sex marriage enacted by many states in the past two decades. They actually prohibit nothing on the part of same-sex couples — forestalling only state recognition of their relationships as marriages. No act is criminalized, and no relationships of adults with each other or with children are targeted for disruption.
In our entire legal history, no one bothered to legislate a restriction of marriage to sexually complementary couples until the day before yesterday because everyone understood what “marriage” meant and would (if asked) have thought it naturally impossible for two men or two women to marry.
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