In addition to the social/cultural effect of officially supporting a law that has been struck down by the courts, there is the very real effect that people can still be arrested for violating the law, and then must go through the court process to be found not guilty, putting them through terrible emotional and financial stress, and leaving a stain on their record.
For example, here in Kanukistan, we have a law that prohibits butt sex for people under eighteen (C.C.C. s. 159). This was struck down in Ontario (R. v. C.M. [1995] C.A., 23 O. R. (3d) 629), and again across Canada (R. v. A.S., [1998], S.C.C.A. No. 636), but police still occasionally make arrests over it (e.g. R. v. C.P.K., [2002] O.J. No. 4929).
If a law is on the books, but has been struck down, then it should be removed from the books, rather than kept there where it can attract further misuse by the authorities.
Ok, well, say, in the 20 years before the law was repealed…from 1981-2001, how many people were arrested for interracial marriage in Alabama.
I’m not just saying it doesn’t have a profound effect. I’m saying it doesn’t even have a trivial effect. It has no effect at all. Alabama wasn’t prosecuting interracial marriage in 2002 and it wasn’t prosecuting it in 2000. The law didn’t change. The code changed, but the code change didn’t change the law.
Again, I don’t really see the point. I guess I can see the distinction you’re making, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to pass a law. It’s like Alabama passing a declaration saying, “We’re not evil anymore!”. It might make Alabamans feel better, and people outside Alabama feel better about Alabama, but the lives of people won’t change.
Removing anti-miscegenation laws makes it easier to deal with shitstains like that Bardwell fellow in Louisiana who repeatedly refused to sign marriage licences for interracial marriages. If the law is in place, then people such as him cannot be sacked for enforcing the law. If the law is no longer in place, then it is far easier to remove the bastard.
Captain, a simple yes or no for each answer please.
Should the police refuse to enforce a long established law that the state has chosen to not repeal?
Should the police be put in a position of having to decide for themselves whether or not to enforce a long established law, regardless of what the state has to say about it?
I think that taking abortion laws into consideration could help the Captain here.
Even when they knew that they were unenforceable, Many states with republican majorities passed new anti-abortion laws in several states even after Roe Vs Wade became the law of the land. The result is that nowadays there are even better reasons not to have RvW overturned, as those states are ready to enforce even more draconian laws over many women and doctors if the federal law is overturned.
The impact right now of course is mostly symbolic, but it did have an impact on how constituents then support or oppose lawmakers.
I can’t answer those questions with a simple yes or no. I’d say, if I’d have to give a yes or no answer, “Yes to the first and no to the second”, but that’s assuming that the law is good law. If your talking about a law that’s been overturned by the courts or that a court has forbidden the enforcement of, no. In neither case should the police decide for themselves to enforce or not enforce the law, but be guided by the instructions of the legislature and the courts.
Then a legislator, when faced with having to vote yea, nea, or abstain to a bill before him or her, should vote to pass the bill that revokes a law that has been declared unconstitutional by the courts, so as to provide clear guidance to the police, rather that put the police in the position of having to decide whether to be guided by the courts or by the legislature. For the legislator to do otherwise and thereby knowingly put the police in the position of having to decide, there should be a better reason than the legislator thinking that the revocation being a waste of time. When applied to the example at hand, that leaves the reason for not voting to repeal the law when actually faced with the taking of the vote being the prejudice against mixed-race marriages.
This business of defending the indefensible goes a long way to the South maintaining its reputation.
But the police aren’t in the position to decide. The decision has already been made for them by the courts. I think that this conversation will have to draw to an end, though, because we’re largely going around in circles and aren’t going to convince each other.
My grandfather told me that it was alright to bring home a black man. He’d even be okay with me bringing home a red man. However, if I brought home a yeller man, he’d kill him. He was on the Pacific side of WWII, so I sort of understood, but it really brought home racism to me.
That document has a “Crosstabs” section which gives correlations. For examples: Palin support is highest among men and among the young; More men than women oppose interracial marriage. (And, on several questions, both young and women score higher on “Not sure”. )
I like those Crosstabs, but the “thinking” of Mississippi Republicans wasn’t high on my list of things to study. Are there are other on-line poll results with info like that? (Best of all would be the raw results from which one’s own correlation matrixes could be constructed.)
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