A recent survey by Public Policy Polling showed that almost half of likely GOP voters in Mississippi and Alabama think the president is Muslim. They also largely don’t believe in evolution in either state. The topic, however, upon which these states seem to be most out of touch with the rest of the country is interracial marriage.
While support for interracial marriage is at an all-time high nationally, 29 percent of likely GOP voters in Mississippi and 21 percent in Alabama think that marriage between people of different races should be illegal.
theGrio: Interracial couple express shock over marriage denial
Perhaps because of attitudes in the South, a Pew study released last month found that interracial couples are more likely to reside in the Western United States.
The last U.S. anti-miscegenation laws were overturned in 1967, six years after Barack Obama was born to a white mother and black father. The case of Loving vs. Virginia was one couple’s attempt to fight back against the criminalization of interracial marriage in the South. The Lovings won their case in the Supreme Court, reversing a nearly 84-year-old precedent that was set in Alabama with Pace v. Alabama.
theGrio: Interracial relationships in the post-’Loving v. Virginia’ age
Despite the legality of interracial marriage in the U.S., attitudes have seemed harder to change. In 2009, TheGrio reported the story of a Louisiana couple refused a marriage license because she was white and he was black.
“Perhaps he’s worried the kids will grow up and be president,” said Bill Quigley, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Justice of the Republican judge who made the decision.
Late last year an interracial Kentucky couple was refused the right to join a small local church. After a national outcry, the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church reversed their decision and allowed the couple to become members.
Follow Donovan X. Ramsey on Twitter at @idxr