Steven Snow: Fears of interracial marriage being overturned are irrational

To The Daily Sun,

The May 10 edition carried an article titled "Interracial marriage rights guaranteed with Marital Freedom Act" by Todd Bookman. The act protects the right to interracial marriage in New Hampshire, which was thought by some to be threatened by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision last term. In a concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested reconsidering "all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell." Griswold was concerned with contraception, Lawrence with same-sex conduct, and Obergefell with same-sex marriage. Justice Thomas did not include Loving v. Virginia among the examples he gave as deserving of reconsideration, and the reason he did not is because Loving v. Virginia, which overturned Virginia's law prohibiting interracial marriages, was based primarily upon the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, according to the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, second edition, whereas the Dobbs decision was based upon the Due Process Clause. Bookman's article fails to mention this, and thus gives the impression that the New Hampshire Legislature accomplished something special.

The reality is that the right to interracial marriage was never threatened by the Dobbs decision. The question in my mind is why the Legislature and governor bothered with the Marital Freedom Act. Did they really not know the facts, or did they just want to quell people's irrational fears?

Steven Snow

Gilford