A Personal Note of Freedom to Love and the Proposed Marriage Amendment:

This was written by Renee Crawford, a great person I came to know pretty well over the course of the 2004 campaign.

I am a straight, married woman of mixed racial heritage. My mother is white and from Neenah, WI. My father is African American and from Key West, FL. An unlikely chance meeting led to them getting married 6 months after they met at the courthouse in downtown Milwaukee. At the time they married in the summer of 1966, it was ILLEGAL for them to get married in 38 states in the United States. They were in love and married against the general will of society in the island of Milwaukee where our Progressive tradition did not prevent their affirming that love and committing to each other legally.

At first it was hard. Their families were less than thrilled, they had to choose their friends carefully and when they went to visit my father's family in Florida, they
couldn't stop to use the bathroom in at least 5 states because of the very real risk of being hanged for loving each other. The reasons they gave for miscegenation laws are not very different than the reasons given today against same sex relationships. Mixing of races was considered against the laws of God and nature, there were worries about "the children", it was dangerous to society, sexually deviant and perverted, and could endanger the very institution of marriage itself. Sound familiar?