Most people will have no idea about this….I know I didn’t, but Monday was Loving Day in our nation’s capital. This has nothing to do with hippies, flowers, and the like. It has to do with a Supreme Court decision from a long time ago that is well worth looking at today.

Loving Day refers to the 1967 court decision in the case of Loving v.Virginia. That edict struck down miscegenation laws in Virginia and 15 other states, all in the South. The laws, which began in Maryland back in 1661, were enacted to ban interracial marriages. One might even think there were those, back in the day, who wanted to pass a constitutional amendment banning such marriages.

Most Americans know, or should know the penalty for a black man having sex with a white woman during the Jim Crow era. Less well known is the fact that even today, a 1913 Massachusetts law forbidding couples from marrying in that state if those nuptials were illegal in their home state is being used as a bludgeon against gays and lesbians.

That law was passed to stop interracial couples from moving to marry in the Bay State. No much for northern enlightenment, past and present. Anyway, there’s a movement in Washington DC to nationalize Loving Day as what supporters describe as a grassroots observation of that court case.

And why not? There are now an estimated 3 million children living in interracial families. Interracial unions now constitute 5% of all American marriages.

We should celebrate, and apply the lessons learned.