Happy Marry-Who-You-Want Day!

Well, not exactly.

But it is the 40th anniversary of the so-called Loving Decision making today Loving Day.

Seems bizarre now, but before 1967, certain states (okay, Southern states) forbade mixed-race couples from marrying. The rationale often invoked God and comprised a dangerous mix of alchemical logic and selective readings from the Bible, as in this ruling by Circuit Court Judge Leon Bazile:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red and placed them on separate continents.... The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Caught up in this were Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, a black woman and a white man who'd married in Washington D.C. Upon returning to Virginia, they found themselves in violation of the state's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 then sentenced to one year in prison.

In contesting the ruling, the Lovings gave the Supreme Court the opportunity to strike down Virginia's statute -- in the so-called Loving Decision -- opening the doors for mixed-race marriages nationwide.

The tide was going in that direction anyway, like when the Florida Supreme Court decided three years earlier that a white person and a black person could be in the same room together (McLaughlin v. Florida). But without Loving, the tide might have taken longer to get here. Who knows -- it might not even be here today.