A joke so old, it is germane

         Liberty is no babe of a heaving
         sigh, born of hugs of welcome to 
         romance's bourgeoisie. It sums the
         toll whose bell is bursting, every
         chime a threnody, to be engaging, 
         maybe thriving, one by one:

         in employment, in housing, in ac-
         commodation, in credit, in admis-
         sion by all portals in the land. 

         Mr Lincoln never said, emancipa-
         tion comes in pairs. Free them,
         he reasoned. Let nature let them
         marry as they like.

         So arose the truth of it, on the
         day when it was told, by a Chief
         Justice of the United States ~

         The freedom to marry, or not mar-

         ry .. resides with the individual,

         and cannot be infringed by the

         State.

         

Chief Justice Earl Warren
  appointed by Dwight David Eisenhower
Justice Hugo Black
  appointed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Justice William O. Douglas
  appointed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Justice Thomas C. Clark
  appointed by Harry S. Truman 
Justice John Marshall Harlan II
  appointed by Dwight David Eisenhower
Justice William J. Brennan
  appointed by Dwight David Eisenhower
Justice Potter Stewart
  appointed by Dwight David Eisenhower
Justice Byron White
  appointed by John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Justice Abraham Fortas
  appointed by Lyndon Baines Johnson
  9 - 0

Loving v. Virginia (1966)


Michael Shaw
The New Yorker
December 18, 2006©