Anti-Gay or Anti-Miscegenation?

Amid the wave of marriage equality news and posts this week, this one from Mediaite stood out for me for the way it cleverly shows the similarities between anti-gay and anti-miscegenation quotes. Here’s another scary quote on the same theme, related to children’s books.

In 1959, Garth Williams’ The Rabbits’ Wedding was removed from some libraries in the South or transferred to restricted shelves, available only upon request, because it depicted the marriage of a black rabbit and a white one. In Alabama, the Montgomery Home News said it was “integrationist propaganda obviously aimed at children in their formative years.” (As cited in the Encyclopedia of Censorship (New Edition).)

Substitute “homosexual” for “integrationist” and you could be talking about a situation with any number of LGBT-inclusive children’s books. The closest parallel, perhaps, is with Uncle Bobby’s Wedding by Sarah Brannen, which features two gay guinea pigs who wed. A library patron tried to have it removed or restricted a few years ago, claiming it was inappropriate for children (about which more here). Clearly, small furry animals have it rough in the pursuit of social justice.

We won’t know the results of this week’s U.S. Supreme Court hearings on marriage equality until June. And while I am well aware that racism and racial inequality persist in our country, we have made some progress on them over the past 50 years. Interracial marriage is legal and no longer causes raised eyebrows in most parts of the country. Our president has interracial parents. We are making progress on LGBT equality, homophobia, and transphobia as well. It is exasperating to note, as Mediaite did, the parallels in attitudes regarding race and sexual orientation, but I am hopeful that someday we may even have a president with lesbian moms. Perhaps even interracial ones.