The San Diego Union-Tribune today came out against mixed-race marriages. Privately, Tribune editorialist Ernst Rudin asked, “what’s next? Letting gays and lesbians marry as well?”

The Walkerville Weekly Reader tracked down the following editorial that appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune in either 2004 or 1947. The archives were unclear on certain points.

Defying the law

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom says he was upholding the California Constitution’s ban on discrimination by handing out marriage licenses (an expected 2,000 by today) to mixed-race couples lining up at City Hall. As legal theory, that’s debatable. What’s certain is that Newsom, along with mixed-race couples such as Andrea Perez and Sylvester Davis, is defying the California law that explicitly defines marriage as between members of the same race.

That law--Civil Codes 60 and 69--were duly enacted by the people of California. Civil Code 69 went a step beyond defining marriage as a union between members of the same race. It also expressly forbids whites to marry a “Negro, mulatto, Mongolian or member of the Malay race”.

Now, Mayor Newsom has taken it upon himself to decide that Civil Code 69 is invalid under California’s Constitution and thus can be ignored.

Whatever one’s beliefs against or in favor of mixed-race marriage, there is another vital issue at stake here. It’s called the rule of law. Without this guarantee of orderly, lawful procedure in obedience to codified statutes, no one’s rights are safe. Indeed, the rule of law is every free society’s chief bulwark against usurpation, chaos and tyranny.

The appropriate place to challenge the constitutionality of California’s ban on mixed-race marriage is in the courts, the Legislature or at the ballot box via the initiative process. Politicians, Mayor Newsom included, are not free to decide which laws they are bound to obey and which they may ignore.

Twenty-four states and several countries, including Germany, have laws forbidding marriage between whites and non-whites. California is hardly alone on this issue. To date, these laws have withstood constitutional scrutiny. The Supreme Court has ruled twice on the matter, first in Dred Scot that Negroes have no rights, and again in Cruikshank that states may abridge the rights that Negroes do not have.

We presume that most Californians will continue to support a ban on mixed-race marriage while perhaps accepting, as we do, the civil-union concept that would extend certain legal protections for negro and white couples. But, again, these matters should be decided in the appropriate lawmaking forums.

The proper forums don’t include the mayor of San Francisco making himself the arbiter of what California laws his city/county government should recognize and obey. The law says that San Francisco must forbid mixed-race marriages, and San Francisco’s only moral choice is to follow that law.