I agree with what you say.  As a woman of color who was in an interracial marriage, I was shocked to find that until the mid 60’s, my marriage was against the law until the 1967 Supreme Court case of Loving vs. Virginia.

Here is a summary of the case and its outcome:

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Loving v Virginia 388 U.S. 1 (1967)
1) Reference Details
Jurisdiction: United States of America, Supreme Court
Date of decision: June 12 1967
Case Status: Concluded
Link to full text:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=388&invol=1
2) Facts
In June 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a
white man, were married in the District of Columbia. Shortly afterwards they returned to
Virginia and were charged with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. The
Lovings were victims of direct de jure racial discrimination inherent in the Virginia code,
which prohibited marriage between whites and non-whites.
At the time of the case, Virginia was one of 16 states to prohibit and punish interracial
marriages. They pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the judge
suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that the couple should not return to
Virginia together during that time.
In his dicta the judge expressed the opinion:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on
separate continents. And but for the inference with his arrangement there would be no cause
for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the
races to mix.”
Following conviction, the Lovings settled in the District of Columbia. In November 1963 the
couple filed a motion in the state trial court to set aside the judgment on the grounds that
the statutes they had violated were unconstitutional and “repugnant to the Fourteenth
Amendment.”
The motion failed. Further appeals followed to the US District Court for the Eastern District
of Virginia, which also rejected the motion, and later to the Supreme Court of Appeals of
Virginia.
In February 1965 the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the
miscegenation statutes and affirmed the convictions. The court made reference to its
decision in Naim v Naim (1955) 197 Va. 80, 87 S.E. 2d 749, in which it had held the
miscegenation laws to be legitimate for such purposes as “to preserve the racial integrity of
its citizens,” and to prevent “corruption of blood,” “a mongrel breed of citizens,” and “the
obliteration of racial pride.”
The Lovings appealed again to the US Supreme Court. The court addressed the issue of the
constitutionality of the miscegenation statutes in the light of the Fourteenth Amendment,
which forbids “all invidious racial discrimination.”
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3) Law
State legislation
• 20-59 Virginia Code, which forbade marriage between whites and non-whites.
• 20-58 Virginia Code, which extended this prohibition to couples who left the state in
order to marry and subsequently returned in cohabitation.
National legislation
Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, s. 1 (“Equal Protection Clause”)
forbids discrimination between US citizens and affords all citizens the equal protection of
the laws.
4) Legal Arguments
The State of Virginia
The State of Virginia argued that the Equal Protection Clause should require state penal
laws with an interracial element to apply equally to whites and non-whites, so that
respective violations should be punished to the same degree. Therefore, and in reliance on
this, the question of constitutionality became whether any rational basis existed for
different treatment of interracial marriages and other marriages. Given that the “scientific
evidence is substantially in doubt”, the court should defer to the state’s legislative policy.
Finally, Virginia relied on statements present in the Thirty-ninth Congress at the
introduction of the Fourteenth Amendment which indicated that the Framers did not intend
the Amendment to make unconstitutional state miscegenation laws.
5) Decision
Mr Chief Justice Warren delivering the unanimous opinion of the court, stated:
“The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state
sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States.”
Subsequently, the “equal application” argument put forward by Virginia was rejected. It did
not exempt the Virginia Code from the prohibition of racial discrimination contained within
the Fourteenth Amendment. In the courts opinion the statutes should not be upheld merely
because of the existence of a rational purpose behind them. Analogous cases involving
discrimination on grounds other than those of race provided no useful guidance in the
present case.
The court declared racial classifications should be subject to the “most rigid scrutiny” and
must be shown to “be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective.”
On the facts there was “patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious
racial discrimination which justifie[d] this classification.”
In regards to the statements made in the Thirty-ninth Congress put forward by the State of
Virginia, the court considered that the statements relied on related to specific statutes and
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not to the broader purpose of the Amendment. Such historical statements were inconclusive
and did not corroborate the state’s “equal application” argument.

It is neither prudent, nor appropriate to treat people differently based on their religion, ethnicity, disability, skin color sexual orientation or any other protected class.

These hundreds and thousands of men and women who wear the uniforms of the respective branches of service, who go to war on behalf of their country, who sacrific their lives in conflict deserve to be treated better than the United States Government presently treats them.

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a challenge to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in a case that came to the Court from the First Circuit.  Of course, much of the opinion being spread about it is just plain false.  Legally speaking, even practically speaking, this wasn’t the case people are making it out to be.

So, what is it?

Not much.

The Supreme Court has a docket that is pretty much completely of its own choosing, a process known as certiorari, or cert for short. If the court grants cert, it accepts the case, will receive a full briefing on the issues in the case and decide the merits of the legal issues between the parties.  The action taken today was denial of certiorari, which ultimately means that there were not at least four justices willing to accept the case.

So, Monday’s action was not a decision on the merits of the case; the Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

What’s more, the decision, particularly coming right now, likely tells us little about what the members of the Court actually think about the constitutionality of the policy.  Why?  Because a justice, say Justice Ginsburg, might believe the policy is unconstitutional but could vote against cert because she was uncertain of the Court’s other members’ views and did not want to risk losing the argument.  Additionally, with the Court is in the midst of a personnel change, I’d think we’re unlikely to see many high-profile, likely 5-4 outcome case, cert grants before a new justice takes the bench.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this case came to the Court with a very odd background posture.  As detailed here, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a legal group dedicated to supporting lesbian and gay soldiers, had been involved in this case, originally representing the 12 individuals challenging the policy.  The organization, however, was no longer representing James Pietrangelo when he sought certiorari.  SLDN continued to represent the other 11 individuals and filed a brief opposing having the Court accept this case.  The lawyers representing the 11 wrote:

Petitioner and the eleven Cook respondents originally filed a single complaint challenging the constitutionality of DADT, on its face and as applied to them.  The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, without allowing any opportunity for discovery or the compilation of a factual record.  Petitioner seeks review of the First Circuit’s decision affirming that decision.

The Cook respondents agree that the court of appeals erred; that DADT is not only bad policy but violates, on its face and as applied, the constitutional rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans; and that the issues at the heart of this case may at some point require resolution by this Court.  If the Court grants review in this case, the Cook respondents will support reversal of the judgment below.  Unlike petitioner, however, the Cook respondents believe the Court would be better advised to defer review at this time.

So, this was not even a case that the legal organization dedicated to helping to overturn this policy — with support from lawyers at WilmerHale — thought should be heard by the Supreme Court.

Then, in an even more odd turn, Pietrangelo filed a brief with the Supreme Court seeking to strike, or toss out, the SLDN brief.  He argued that this should be done because the group had earlier been representing Pietrangelo as well.  SLDN then filed a brief withdrawing from representation of the other 11 individuals, noting that it was doing so “in order to avoid any possibility that this dispute between petitioner and counsel might prejudice either the Cook respondents [the other 11 individuals] or petitioner in this proceeding.”  Substitute counsel replaced SLDN and the WilmerHale lawyers representing the “Cook respondents.”

In short, I don’t think that this is a case that anyone should want to be the Supreme Court challenge to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  The Court is experiencing change in its membership, the factual record is not well-developed (which we definitely want since the factual records in so many of these cases are very compelling, as with the case of Lt. Dan Choi), the 12 individual being kicked out of the military in the case disagree on whether the case should be heard, and the organization existing solely to fight Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is no longer involved in the case.

Many of us want the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and we want it now.  But fighting for a bad case to go up to the Supreme Court is neither strategic nor likely to end in success.

Don’t ask, don’t tell – Op-Ed: A Gay Soldier’s Husband

I just watched this video clip on the NY Times and was moved to tears. Why can’t we repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” We had Brown vs. Board of Education and desegregated schools, we gave women the right to vote, we had Loving vs. Virginia and had the supreme court outlaw mysogeny (interracial marriage), so why can’t we outlaw discrimination against gays?

I was having this conversation with a family member recently who is opposed to gay marriage – many years ago, a gay friend quoted me something she had seen on a t-shirt which basically stated that gays won’t marry straights if they are allowed to marry each other.

For 15 years, I was in a marriage where I was unfulfilled, miserable and desperately lonely. The only things my former husband and I had in common were our deep and abiding faith in the Mormon Church and our four remarkable boys.

The pain and anguish that I felt when he finally came out still cause me to tear up on occasion to this day – I remember telling him – I didn’t care that he was gay, but I did care that he lied to me – he was supposed to be my best friend. Those feelings hold true today – we are friends – no longer as close as we were, there has been way too much pain and betrayal, but we maintain a friendship for the sake of our children.

Unless people have been on my side of the equation, they should stop speaking out against gay marriage.

The couple who were so beautifully portrayed in this video are a regular couple (the individual in the military is in Iraq and was not able to be videotaped) – they live in a beautiful home, but when they write letters to each other, they have to censor them and be so careful about what they write, lest someone should find out their secret.

It is time to repeal Don’t ask, don’t tell – it is not working, it is unamerican and unconstitutional.