Public officials in Tennessee can now refuse to grant a marriage license to anyone at their own discretion, for any reason.
Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed into law House Bill 878 on Wednesday, which took effect immediately. The bill — just a few sentences in length — only states that “a person shall not be required to solemnize a marriage.” Only state notary publics, government officials, and religious figures can “solemnize” a marriage in Tennessee, according to state code.
None of the sponsors behind the bill have been made public statements on its introduction or passage, nor have they given comment to media organizations. The only known remarks regarding the law from state Rep. Monty Fritts (take a guess), who sponsored it in the House, are from February of last year, when he spoke to the state Subcommittee on Children and Family Affairs.
And Loving v. Virginia is next.
The act of Clarence Thomas voting to overturn Loving will be America’s pinnacle act of irony. Nothing will top it.
I can imagine him literally writing in his concurrence: “It is time to pull the ladder up behind us.”
I’ve been predicting it for years that that’s what will happen
My understanding is that Thomas wants to end Loving and allow bans on interracial marriage because he wants to expose how racist America is and to radicalize black Americans into separatism.
Like the goal is to show black Americans that racist whites run the country and that they will prevent you from marrying other races because they hate you and consider you to be The Other. And it is impossible to change their minds on this. Which is why the Constitution and caselaw cannot protect us. Instead, we need to self-segregate away from whites and form our own communities away from them. Similar to the Amish or the hasidic Jewish neighborhoods in NYC.
Thomas in some ways has more in common with Marcus Garvey than Ronald Reagan. It’s just an incredibly cruel and largely contradictory version of Garvey’s racial separatism
Very creative and all but… You do know about his wife, right?
The white lady who helped plan the insurrection?
Yeah, she isn’t an issue with any of this. His point is that if it wasn’t for SCOTUS then interracial marriage would still be banned. And he wants to make that true so that others are radicalized by it.
Him being deprived of his own marriage would just be seen by him as effective additional propaganda - would show that no matter how high black people climb in society, whites will still destroy their lives. Which would help show that integration is an impossibility, which is his goal
Thomas is going to be all in on overturning Loving v. Virginia.