Same-sex marriage advocates insist that the court’s Obergefell ruling is not like Roe v. Wade, which engendered undying controversy, but like Loving v. Virginia, the universally accepted decision that struck down bans on interracial marriage—a decision now so uncontroversial that most Americans have never heard of it. If that is true, then anyone who opposes Obergefell is an irrational bigot—the moral and legal equivalent of a racist.

Interracial marriage bans were inconsistent not only with the common law of England but with the customs of every previous culture throughout human history.
But, as I explain in my book, great thinkers throughout human history—and from every political community until about the year 2000—thought it reasonable and right to view marriage as the union of husband and wife. Indeed, this view of marriage has been nearly a human universal. It has been shared by the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions; by ancient Greek and Roman thinkers not influenced by these religions; and by Enlightenment philosophers. It is affirmed by canon law as well as common and civil law.

Bans on interracial marriage, by contrast, were part of an insidious system of racial subordination and exploitation that denied the equality and dignity of all human beings and forcibly segregated citizens based on race. When these interracial marriage bans first arose in the American colonies, they were inconsistent not only with the common law of England but with the customs of every previous culture throughout human history.

 
—Ryan T. Anderson, “Will Marriage Dissidents Be Treated As Bigots Or Pro-Lifers?“

Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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