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What are the boundaries of love and sacrifice, and where does one draw the line between them?

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What are the boundaries of love and sacrifice, and where does one draw the line between them?

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How To Tell If Someone Truly Loves You | Femi Ogunjinmi | TEDxXavierUniversity

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Five Feet Apart (2019) - Will's Goodbye Scene (9/10) | Movieclips

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Shakespeare spins a tale about two young people that fall in love at first sight, but little do the lovers know that they are members of two feuding families. They know that they want to be together, so they get married in secret. Romeo is banished after he kills one of Juliet's cousins in a duel. After Romeo leaves the city, Juliet's parents inform her that she will be marrying Paris in a matter of a few days. Juliet goes to the Friar in a rage and he gives her a potion that will put her asleep while making her appear dead. Romeo is informed that Juliet is dead before anyone can tell him otherwise, and he rushes back to her graveside. When Romeo gets there, he sees Juliet and kills himself because he cannot bear to live without her. When Juliet wakes up and sees Romeo's body, she kills herself as well.

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4.1.118-123
Friar Lawrence: And hither shall he come, and he and I/ Will watch thy waking, and that very night/ Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua. / And this shall free thee from this present shame,/ If no inconstant toy, nor womanish fear,/ Abate thy valor in the acting it.

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Chorus: Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,/ Alike bewitchèd by the charm of looks;/ But to his foe supposed he must complain,/ And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks./ Being held a foe, he may not have access/ To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear,

5.3.286-287.
Friar Lawrence: And she, too desperate, would not go with me,

But, as it seems, did violence on herself.

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Out of Darkness follows the story of Naomi and Wash in East Texas. Naomi lives there with her step siblings and step father Henry, and she is the care taker for her siblings. Naomi lives there and takes care of them even though her step father comes onto her in a sexual manner. Naomi meets Wash in the African American part of town, and they develop a relationship and it turns romantic. Eventually, Naomi and Wash try to run out of town with Wash's family, but Henry catches them and tells Naomi that she could come be his wife and he would let them both live. Naomi and Wash decide not to live without each other and they both are killed by Henry.

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What Is Miscegenation?

The Loving case was a challenge to centuries of American laws banning miscegenation, i.e., any marriage or interbreeding among different races. Restrictions on miscegenation existed as early as the colonial era, and of the 50 U.S. states, all but nine states had a law against the practice at some point in their history.

Early attempts to dispute race-based marriage bans in court met with little success. One of the first and most noteworthy cases was 1883's Pace v. Alabama, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an Alabama anti-miscegenation law was constitutional because it punished Black people and white people equally. In 1888, meanwhile, the high court ruled that states had the authority to regulate marriage.

By the 1950s, more than half the states in the Union-including every state in the South-still had laws restricting marriage by racial classifications. In Virginia, interracial marriage was illegal under 1924's Racial Integrity Act. Those who violated the law risked anywhere from one to five years in a state penitentiary.

Richard and Mildred Loving

The central figures in Loving v. Virginia were Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, a couple from the town of Central Point in Caroline County, Virginia.

Richard, a white construction worker, and Mildred, a woman of mixed Black and Native American ancestry, were longtime friends who had fallen in love. In June 1958, they exchanged wedding vows in Washington, D.C., where interracial marriage was legal, and then returned home to Virginia.

On July 11, 1958, just five weeks after their wedding, the Lovings were woken in their bed at about 2:00 a.m. and arrested by the local sheriff. Richard and Mildred were indicted on charges of violating Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, which deemed interracial marriages a felony.

When the couple pleaded guilty the following year, Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced them to one year in prison, but suspended the sentence on the condition that they would leave Virginia and not return together for a period of 25 years.

Richard and Mildred Loving's Children

Following their court case, the Lovings were forced to leave Virginia and relocate to Washington, D.C. The couple lived in exile in the nation's capital for several years and raised three children-sons Sidney and Donald and a daughter, Peggy-but they longed to return to their hometown.

In 1963, a desperate Mildred Loving wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy asking for assistance. Kennedy referred the Lovings to the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU), which agreed to take their case.

Loving v. Virginia

The Lovings began their legal battle in November 1963. With the aid of Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, two ACLU young lawyers, the couple filed a motion asking for Judge Bazile to vacate their conviction and set aside their sentences.

When Bazile refused, Cohen and Hirschkop took the case to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, which also upheld the original ruling. Following another appeal, the case made its way to the United States Supreme Court in April 1967.

During oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Virginia's Assistant Attorney General Robert D. McIlwaine III defended the constitutionality of his state's anti-miscegenation law and compared it to similar regulations against incest and polygamy. Cohen and Hirschkop, meanwhile, argued the Virginia statute was illegal under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees all citizens due process and equal protection under the law.

During one exchange, Hirschkop stated that Virginia's interracial marriage law and others like it were rooted in racism and white supremacy. "These are not health and welfare laws," he argued. "These are slavery laws, pure and simple."

Supreme Court Ruling

The Supreme Court announced its ruling in Loving v. Virginia on June 12, 1967. In a unanimous decision, the justices found that Virginia's interracial marriage law violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

"Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the state," Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote.

The landmark ruling not only overturned the Lovings' 1958 criminal conviction, it also struck down existing laws against interracial marriage in 16 U.S. states including Virginia.

What Happened to the Lovings?

The Lovings had lived secretly on a Virginia farm for much of their legal battle, but after the Supreme Court decision, they returned to the town of Central Point to raise their three children.

Richard Loving was killed in 1975 when a drunk driver in Caroline County struck the couple's car. Mildred survived the crash and went on to spend the rest of her life in Central Point. She died in 2008, having never remarried.

Legacy of Loving v. Virginia

Loving v. Virginia is considered one of the most significant legal decisions of the civil rights era. By declaring Virginia's anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ended prohibitions on interracial marriage and dealt a major blow to segregation.

Despite the court's decision, however, some states were slow to alter their laws. The last state to officially accept the ruling was Alabama, which only removed an anti-miscegenation statute from its state constitution in 2000.

In addition to its implications for interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia was also invoked in subsequent court cases concerning same-sex marriage.

In 2015, for example, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited the Loving case in his opinion on the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized gay marriage across the United States.

On December 13, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law. The law requires that individual states recognize same-sex and interracial marriages that were lawfully performed in other states.

June 12-the anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision-is now commemorated each year as "Loving Day," a holiday celebrating multiracial families.

Sources

Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law-an American History. By Peter Wallenstein.
Loving v. Virginia. Encyclopedia Virginia.
Loving v. Virginia. Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute.
Law and the Politics of Marriage: Loving v. Virginia After 30 Years Introduction. Robert A. Destro.
What You Didn't Know About Loving v. Virginia. Time Magazine.

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Loving v. Virginia: 1967 & Supreme Court Case | HISTORY

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Loving v. Virginia was a 1967 Supreme Court case in which the court's ruling struck down state laws banning interracial marriage throughout the United States.

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This article is about Richard and Mildred Loving and the court case that they brought all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. These two were an interracial couple who married before it was legal for them to do so. They went to prison, and were told that they would have to leave Virginia if they wanted to remain married. They had to raise their children away from their families and stay away or else they would be taken to prison again.

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This article relates to the essential question because the line between love and sacrifice for the Lovings was the same thing. They sacrificed their own safety and their children's safety as well so that they could be together. This gives a viewpoint that sacrifice is necessary for love to exist.

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Femi Ogunjimi is a realtionship coach that describes some of the clients that he has had come through his door. Some clients come in and explain that the problem in their relationship is that they, or their partner, is cheating. Ogunjimi explains that true love, if not backed up by action, is not true love. Ogunjimi then explain that there are 3 types of love that exist, and they are: Philia love, the love that you share with your family or friends; Eros love, which is a sexual love that you experience when you see an attractive person randomly; Agape love, which is true love that allows you to make sacrifices. If someone truly loves you, or if you truly love someone, you will be willing to sacrifice for them. In order to truly know if you love someone, you should be willing to sacrifice for the person you love.

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This video gives a good explanation of what sacrifice is and how it plays into love. In this video, Ogunjimi makes the case that love does not have to include sacrifice, but true love requires it. So these two lines are one in the same.

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This movie scene is from "Five Feet Apart". In this movie, two teenagers with cystic fibrosis fall in love, but due to their illness, they cannot be within 5 feet of each other without risking their already fragile lungs. Before this scene takes place, Will must give Stella mouth to mouth in order to save her life after she falls into a frozen pond. When they get to the hospital, the doctors and Stella's parents are trying to convince her to take the lungs, but she refuses because she says that getting new lungs won't mean anything if she can't have Will in her life. Will asks her to take the lungs for him and Stella agrees. This scene begins with Stella waking up after her surgery, and him telling her that he has to say goodbye to her so that he can protect her.

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Will makes the decision to walk away and give up their relationship so that Stella will be able to live. He is prepared to sacrifice this love for the safety of Stella. In the previous scene, Stella is willing to risk an increase in her quality of life so that she is able to stay will Will. This scene and movie show both sides of the question of if love requires sacrifice.

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Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe | Poetry Foundation

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Annabel Lee tells the story of a man that fell in love with Annabel Lee as a child, and has had to live his adult life without her. Eventually, her family comes to take her away. They lock her in a castle by the sea where they cannot be together. The angels in heaven were jealous of their love, and she eventually dies because they sent a cold wind that kills her, and he goes to sleep by her tomb every night while thinking of her.

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Annabel Lee's family thought that sacrificing her love and happiness was worth keeping her alive even if that meant that she could not be with the person that she loved. The narrator does not see things this way since he goes to lay down by her tomb each night.

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I know my sister like I know my own mind
You will never find anyone as trusting or as kind
If I tell her that I love him she'd be silently resigned
he'd be mine
She would say, "I'm fine"
She's be lying.

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This song talks about how Angelica meets Alexander Hamilton and immediately likes him and wants to be with him, but her sister tells her that she wants him to be hers. Angelica decides to give up having Alexander Hamilton so that her sister can have him and be happy and satisfied.

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This song is an example of the love that sisters have for each other. In the lyrics above, Angelica decides to let her sister have the man that she seems to love at first sight. These lyrics also show that Angelica's sister would be willing to give up Hamilton if she knew that Angelica loved him too. Both show that they can sacrifice something in order to show that they love someone. This also shows that you are not limited to only sacrifice things in a romantic relationship, but that families can do this as well.

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The above picture is from the Black Lives Matter Protests from this past summer. The people that took part in these protests felt a need to call for equality for Black people in their country. Calling for equality means that you need to have a love for others. Some of the people that were in these protests sacrificed their bodies and were willing to go to jail for a night.

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"They lay together for a moment in their brokenness. His hand found hers. She looked up at him with her good eye. He smiled crookedly. Teeth were missing, and his mouth was full of blood."

"But even in the midst of it, buried inside the desire to feel nothing and be nothing, was an even stronger desire. To live as long as Wash was alive. ... She had forced herself to imagine life going on. An after to this."

"She had studied the twins' penmanship notebooks to make sure she got it right."

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In the quotes for the book, we can see Naomi and Wash sacrificing themselves because of the love that they shared. Because they were getting ready to leave and start a new life, Henry knew that he had to act. They also did not allow themselves to be afraid so that they would be able to comfort each other in their last moments.

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This text is the foundation for this because it raises many questions about when and what you should sacrifice in the face of love. This can include the sacrifices that the two families should have made and what Romeo and Juliet sacrificed in order to be together.