All you need is love

I don't always read the obituaries, but every so often something catches my eye. This morning it was an obituary for a true American hero, the fittingly-named Mildred Loving, who played a part in righting a wrong so fundamental that your average teenager today can hardly believe it was ever part of American life. As the Associated Press obituary tells it,

"Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died...

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause," the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero - just a bride. "It wasn't my doing," Loving said. "It was God's work." ...

"The law that threatened the Lovings with a year in jail was a vestige of a hateful, discriminatory past that could not stand in the face of the Lovings' quiet dignity," said Steven Shapiro, national legal director for the ACLU.

"We loved each other and got married," she told The Washington Evening Star in 1965, when the case was pending. "We are not marrying the state. The law should allow a person to marry anyone he wants."

Yes it should. Who will be this generation's Mildred and Richard Loving? I hope we find out one day soon.