ataxiwardance

…In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the case of Richard Perry Loving, who was white, and his wife, Mildred Loving, of African American and Native American descent.

The case changed history - and was captured on film by LIFE photographer Grey Villet, whose black-and-white photographs are now set to go on display at the International Center of Photography.

In 2007, 32 years after her husband died, Mrs Loving - who herself passed away the following year - released a statement in support of same-sex marriage. She said: ‘Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.’

Photographs of the Loving’s interracial marriage at a time when it was banned in 16 states

Mildred Delores Jeter Loving and her husband Richard Perry Loving were plaintiffs in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia (1967).

The Lovings were an interracial married couple who were criminally charged under a Virginia statute banning such marriages. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Lovings filed suit seeking to overturn the law. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, striking down the Virginia statute and all state anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional violations of the Fourteenth Amendment.

FBI: If We Told You, You Might Sue

Often when the government tries to suppress information about its surveillance programs, it cites national-security concerns. But not always.

In 2008, a few years after the Bush administration’s warrantless-wiretapping program was revealed for the first time by theNew York Times, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act. That act authorizes the government to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international communications without meaningful oversight. Aswe’ve explained before (including in our lawsuit challenging the statute), the FISA Amendments Act is unconstitutional.

In 2009, we also filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government’s interpretation and implementation of the FISA Amendments Act. Last November, the government released a few hundred pages of heavily redacted documents. Though redacted, the documents confirmed that the government had interpreted the statute as broadly as we had feared and even that the government had repeatedly violated the few limitations that the statute actually imposed.

Two weeks ago, as part of our FOIA lawsuit over those documents, the government gave us several declarations attempting to justify the redaction of the documents. We’ve been combing through the documents and recently came across this unexpectedly honest explanation from the FBI of why the government doesn’t want us to know which “electronic communication service providers” participate in its dragnet surveillance program. On page 32:

There you have it. The government doesn’t want you to know whether your internet or phone company is cooperating with its dragnet surveillance program because you might get upset and file lawsuits asserting your constitutional rights. Would it be such a bad thing if a court were to consider the constitutionality of the most sweeping surveillance program ever enacted by Congress?

BIENVENIDOS A LOS BIZARRO ESTADOS UNIDOS