ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601050025
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER EDITORIAL WRITER
IT WAS the early '60s, and people were beginning to accept the inevitable: Black and white children would go to school together; blacks would be given something approximating equal opportunity in education, jobs, housing. Fine; so be it, many whites were saying. ``But you wouldn't want your daughter to marry one.'' Into this mine-field of mind-set walked a young Alexandria attorney, Bernie Cohen.
Del. Bernie Cohen, D-Alexandria, who is retiring from the General Assembly after 16 years, is not the only Virginia lawyer or lawmaker who's done battle for the cause of civil liberties. But he's certainly one of the few they've made a movie about.
This spring, Showtime will air a made-for-TV movie about the 1967 challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia to this state's laws banning interracial marriages. Cohen (along with attorney Philip Hirschkop) was the lawyer who took the famous Loving vs. Commonwealth of Virginia case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
It took him 51/2 years after the Lovings were referred to him by then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy. But as a result of his efforts, anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia and 15 other Southern states were struck down. The high court ruled that they were in violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause and ``freedom to marry,'' calling that one of Americans' ``basic civil rights.''
Cohen is possibly better known by state residents today for some of the legislation he has sponsored. He was the author, for example, of Virginia's ``Death With Dignity'' bill that gave legal status to living wills, and also of the Virginia Clean Indoor Air Act - ferociously opposed by the tobacco industry - that provided smoke-free areas in most public places.
But the Loving vs. Virginia decision is recognized by many nationwide as a civil-rights landmark, and the movie about it - in part a recognition of the American Civil Liberties Union's 75th anniversary - may cast a state and national spotlight on Cohen as his legislative proposals never did.
It could, conceivably, also stir up new controversy about interracial marriages - if, indeed, they've become noncontroversial in lo these 30 years.
Cohen, speaking recently about the court case, recalled that the issue was regarded at the time as ``the last of the taboos of integration.'' He seemed surprised when I mentioned that Ann Landers apparently still considers it something of a taboo.
In the Dec. 4, 1995, issue of The New Yorker magazine, an article about the popular advice columnist discussed the changing tenor of the problems that letter-writers have presented to her over her 40-year career. Where once the concerns were of the ilk of acne, not having a date for the senior prom or having an inattentive husband, now they're more likely to be about AIDS, homosexuality, gun control, violence, illegal drugs.
Landers is not known for shying away from thorny social issues, but she told The New Yorker that interracial marriage is ``one subject I have not dealt with in a column, because the roof would fall in, and I don't need that.''
I haven't seen the Showtime movie, so I couldn't guess what the reaction to it may be. It does seem, though, that the ACLU's old issues have a troubling way of resurfacing when least expected.
Censorship on the Internet, proposed constitutional bans on flag burnings, prayer in public schools, VMI's all-male admissions policy, redistricting, the motor-voter law - all are recent issues that have drawn in the ACLU to fight for its bedrock principles of civil liberties. In almost every case, these recent issues echo past battles - in courts and in legislatures - that the ACLU helped fight and thought were won.
But then, it's been part of the ACLU's mantra for 75 years: Civil liberties are constantly threatened, require constant vigilance and protection. Civil-liberty victories just won't stay won.
I am not, as George Bush once sneered at the organization's supporters, a ``card-carrying member of the ACLU'' - read: woozy liberal - and I don't always agree with the ACLU's political interpretations and positions. I do, though, occasionally send it contributions because I think it's serving a purpose that no other organization serves in quite the same way.
That is: to vigorously defend freedom of speech, religious liberty, voting rights, fair trials, racial and sexual equality and every dotted i and crossed t of the Bill of Rights - which, as ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser says, was the original ``Contract With America.''
It defends this bill of goods sometimes against all odds, and regardless of how much its critics - even its own members - pile on. In 1977, in one of the stormiest episodes in its history, numerous members bolted the organization when it defended the right of the American Nazi Party to march through Skokie, Ill., a mostly Jewish suburb of Chicago where many survivors of the Holocaust lived.
Also, I'm right proud to know ACLU activists like Bernie Cohen. I'd sure want them on my side in a courtroom.
In the movie about Loving vs. Virginia, incidentally, Cohen's younger self is portrayed by actor Corey Parker. Cohen, now 61, was a consultant for the movie, and has donated his $5,000 consultant's fee to the ACLU of Virginia Federation.
LENGTH: Medium: 94 linesby CNB