I completely missed Loving Day this year (it is June 12th, FYI). Marriage rights aside (& that is hard to do what with the right to get married -or not- all over the news), the Loving case & decision has always kind of interested me. First of all, there is their great name: Loving.
But more than that is Mr. & Mrs. Loving's overwhelming, indisputable ordinariness. Aside from overturning an outdated, racist law & making big time history, these people are downright boring. Mr. Loving was a garden variety small town boy grown to man, he liked tinkering with cars. Mrs. Loving took care of the house & children. In one of my favorite Hollywood commentaries when Mrs. Loving saw the movie made about her life she said most of it was wrong, the only part they got right was she had three children. Anyone reading this blog or anything else ever written about the Lovings would realize the other fact the movie got right was there was a landmark civil rights case surrounding their marriage. That Mrs. Loving clearly does not view this as the centerpiece of her own life makes me like her more.
There is not much else to say really. You can watch the documentary which is more about the case than the people. & I kind of get the impression Mr. & Mrs. Loving would have preferred it that way (the documentary was made after they had both died, the fictionalized film is the one Mildred Loving found inaccurate). Loving v The State of Virginia comes up a lot in the gay marriage debate, on both sides believe it or not. But that is a conversation for another post; today I just want to notice the Lovings, that they walked out of small town USA, made their argument & then went back home, happy to leave the spotlight. Whenever people start grandstanding about "real americans", it is the Lovings I think of.
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