My wife and I gave the homily at a wedding on Saturday. The newlyweds are a white woman and a Malaysian-American man. His father originated in India and his mother in Wisconsin. At the same time, my wife is Thai-American while I am white. Interracial couples were front and center at the wedding. Yet that dynamic was never mentioned, as far as I know. We even preached about community, pointing out the ethnic and socio-economic diversity of the congregation and calling them to love each other, but it never crossed our mind to comment on interracial marriage.
Such mixed-race marriages seem commonplace nowadays. Yet, just a couple generations ago, they were illegal in many states. The new film Loving tells the key story in this generational change. That title is not a gerund. It’s a name: Richard and Mildred Loving were a white husband and a black wife in rural Virginia, a state where interracial marriage was illegal. They spent some time in jail, then lived in D.C. for years, then hid out to avoid the police. At the same time, ACLU lawyers were arguing their legal case all the way to the Supreme Court. Loving v. Virginia is the case they eventually won, overturning anti-miscegenation laws and naming marriage a fundamental right.
This is a story of simple, blue-collar, country folks stuck in a complicated legal battle. The Lovings are people of quiet dignity, not crusaders out to change the world. They just want to live a peaceful family life with their three kids. Mildred understands the legal back-and-forth, the stakes for them and other couples like them, but Richard never does. But he understands the personal battle when a lawyer explains that anti-miscegenation laws define their children as illegitimate, as people who never should have been born.
Such stories are the specialty of director Jeff Nichols. His setting is the southern gothic of open fields and twilight, and his characters are men of few words. He excels in generating tension in quiet spaces – there’s only one other car on the road, but maybe that driver is out to get our hero? Two of his previous films, Take Shelter and Midnight Special, also followed such characters through tense run-ins with powers beyond their control, but those were supernatural in nature. Loving is his most straightforward drama, and his most relatable. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga are both wonderful in the main roles, though Negga’s Mildred is the greater standout. She’s the one who draws strength from their pain to speak up for her family’s rights.
Even though Loving is a true, unassuming story, Nichols makes a brilliant, dramatic connection. At the beginning, the Lovings have to travel north to D.C. to have a civil wedding. The judge tells them that marriage is the backbone of our culture, and that the institution must be held strong by committed couples. The Lovings are just that. At the end, their marriage is on trial back in D.C., before the highest judges in the nation. They have kept their end of the social contract laid out by the first judge, and now these judges must decide if our culture can include their commitment.
The evening after my wife and I preached at the wedding, I attended a talk from a leader in the cross-section of the Black Lives Matter movement and the American Church, an African-American woman. Obviously, the recent election was a prominent topic. She spoke with energy and authority about our need for justice and honest conversation, and she mentioned at one point that a few decades ago her marriage with a white man would have been illegal. Mildred and Richard Loving never would have spoken out as boldly as this leader did, but, for her and me and so many others, the Lovings blazed the trail.
You might also find these reviews of Loving helpful: