To the Editor:
In his Letter to the Editor, Chris Langevin (The Dartmouth, March 31) notes that marriage laws are applied equally since all persons, gay or straight, can marry another so long as that person is NOT "underage, already married, consanguine, or of the same sex as his partner." I would wonder if we could add a fifth category to that list: of a different race than his partner. According to Mr. Langevin's analysis, this would be perfectly fine since it would apply to blacks and whites equally everyone would have the right to marry someone of his race.
While some may agree with the tenability of my proposition, a unanimous Supreme Court did not in the landmark 1967 case Loving v. Virginia. The Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws because the classification of people by race was discrimination, not just disparate treatment of different classes of people. Thus, everyone can be treated equally while still being an unconstitutional violation of "civil rights."
Mr. Langevin seems to attach importance to the fact that melanin content is an immutable characteristic and that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice (a highly questionable and I believe ultimately illogical proposition). I would merely note that in his list of qualifications, whether or not someone is already married is clearly a lifestyle choice, but is not consanguinity also an immutable characteristic? Or, to put it another way, would a white person choosing to marry a black person be a lifestyle choice? And if the classification is gender, is that (mostly) immutable? Perhaps that is not really the test to determine the validity of the classification.
The debate over the constitutionality of this discrimination depends on being able to identify the justifications for it and determining whether they are sufficient to warrant it. But pretending that this is not a civil rights or a discrimination issue is ridiculous.
