A 1958 Gallup poll showed that 94 percent of Americans—96 percent of white Americans—disapproved of interracial marriage. In 1967, the year Loving v. Virginia was decided, that number was 72 percent. It wasn’t until 1991 that the majority of Americans told Gallup that mixed-race marriages are acceptable.

The first anti-miscegenation law to be struck down in the US was in California’s Perez v. Sharp in 1948. Other states followed suit throughout the 1950s, with the last of them struck down with the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia in 1967.

If left up to national public opinion, then, my own parents’ marriage would not have been legal or valid until I was 11 years old. (Leaving aside for now the question of whether the legitimacy imposed by the courts helped to sway public opinion, which I happen to think is very likely.)

Thank you California, and thank you SCOTUS, for overriding “the will of the people” when it unjustly trampled the rights, dreams and desires of families.