That's an interesting path to take

It probably won't work, though. Several organizations have started an advertising campaign in anticipation of Loving v. Virginia's 40th anniversary, comparing anti-miscegenation laws to current laws forbidding gay marriage. They show several prominent interracial couples and proclaim they "couldn't marry today if discrimination were still the law of the land." The couples they chose were: former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen and his wife, Janet; Tiger and Elin Woods; U.S. Senator Jim Webb and Hong Le; U.S. Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle; U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao; and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his wife, Columba. A PDF of the ads is available here.

Bush didn't respond to a request for comment. But John Stemberger, an Orlando attorney who is spearheading a petition drive to put a gay marriage ban up for a vote in Florida in 2008, called the ads "a little bit silly." And he suggested that no laws would have prevented two people of differing ethnicities to wed.

Depends what he means by that, but he's essentially correct that there wasn't any law that would have prevented the Bushes from marrying. None of the anti-miscegenation laws prevented Latinos from marrying whites; unless, of course, they were part black or Native American.

"The ruling did not redefine the definition of marriage, it affirmed it and said that any male and any female has a right to marry, irrespective of race," Stemberger said. "Segregation was clearly a social ill."

Homophobia, of course, isn't a social ill at all -- it's sound Republican policy.

And it's nice to know that Bush is so concerned with upholding the sanctity and inerrancy of that holiest of holy books, the dictionary.