What is this quote referring to?

[ck4829]

"The purity of public morals," the court declared, "the moral and physical development … so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them, should be prohibited by positive law, and be subject to no evasion."

10 guesses and no looking it up.

Who can get it right?

[pk_du]

1. Gotta be 1930s germany n/t

[ck4829]

2. No, try again

[ClintonTyree]

3. FOX News?

:shrug:

[ck4829]

5. No, try again

[RoBear]

4. Homosexuality.

[ck4829]

6. No, try again

[ET Awful]

7. I'm going to take a wild guess that it's a court ruling from the early

20th century regarding miscegenation (as it was called at the time).

[ck4829]

11. Bingo! We have a winner!

[ET Awful]

12. I don't know that I've ever seen it before, but that's just what it sounde

like to me, what with the blather about natural law and such.

on edit: I just searched, and I was only half right . . . subject was right, but I had the date wrong . . . looks like late 19th century.

[longship]

18. That's miscegenation

Interracial breeding.

[ET Awful]

20. Typo - now fixed. n/t

[NMDemDist2]

8. desegregation ala Rehnquist? n/t

[Robertwf]

9. Quote

I believe it is part of a letter wriien by Jefferson to Adams during Jeffersons presidential campaign

[justiceischeap]

10. Slavery?

[achtung_circus]

13. Mixed marriages

something to do with Jim Crow laws?

[ck4829]

16. Yes

It's kind of scary though when a person can understandably confuse this quote with something that was said about GLBT people.

[alittlelark]

14. Kinney v Virginia?

[whistle]

15. White supremacists used to justify for miscegenation laws...

...which outlawed interracial marriages back in the 1800's:

<snip>
4-19-04

Why the Ugly Rhetoric Against Gay Marriage Is Familiar to this Historian of Miscegenation
By Peggy Pascoe
Ms. Pascoe is Associate Professor and Beekman Chair of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon. She is completing a book on the significance of miscegenation law in United States history.


We are in the midst of an attempt to ground a category of discrimination in the fundamental social bedrock of marriage law. I would argue that it is virtually impossible to understand the current debate over same-sex marriage without first understanding the history of American miscegenation laws and the long legal fight against them, if only because both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage come to this debate, knowing or unknowingly, wielding rhetorical tools forged during the history of miscegenation law. The arguments white supremacists used to justify for miscegenation laws--that interracial marriages were contrary to God's will or somehow unnatural--are echoed today by the most conservative opponents of same-sex marriage. And supporters of same-sex marriage base their cases on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, echoing the position the U.S. Supreme Court took when it declared miscegenation laws unconstitutional in the case of Loving v. Virginia. Both sides confront the structures of marriage law exclusion that were also forged during the history of miscegenation, including, as I show below, the legal maneuvering over the seemingly minor bureaucratic practice of issuing marriage licenses.

<snip>
On this fourth point--the supposed "unnaturality" of interracial marriage--judges formed a virtual chorus. Here, for example, is the declaration that the Supreme Court of Virginia used to invalidate a marriage between a black man and a white woman in 1878:

The purity of public morals," the court declared, "the moral and physical development of both races….require that they should be kept distinct and separate… that connections and alliances so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them, should be prohibited by positive law, and be subject to no evasion.


<more>
<link> http://hnn.us/articles/4708.html

[ck4829]

17. Aaaah! You found the page where I found it from!

:hide:

[whistle]

19. I see we both steal from very good sources