Streeter: “Respect For Marriage Act” isn’t just about same-sex unions. It’s about my interracial one, too.

I came across something funny this week while researching the national and state implications of the Respect For Marriage Act, which recently passed the Senate and is expected to clear the House and then be signed into law by President Joe Biden any day now. Actually, maybe “funny” isn’t the right word for it still being necessary, in the year 2022, to codify the right of same-sex and interracial couples to be recognized as legally married in every state of the union. “Sad” is more like it. Anyway, I researched when marriages between Black and white people, like the one I was in before I was widowed, were made legal in Maryland. Officially, that was in 1967, when the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia, allowing such unions in all 50 states, including this one. But just last month, outgoing Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh formally overruled previous restrictions against Black and white people marrying each other.