During an interview with reporters, Braun seemed to suggest that along with abortion rights, interracial marriage should have been left up to states to decide. In a conversation with Dan Carden of The Times of Northwest Indiana, Braun was suggesting that some matters should be decided by the state and not the federal government. The reporter asked if the Supreme Court would be engaged in “judicial activism” if it repealed Roe v. Wade in the summer. The senator responded by arguing that the court went too far in its 1973 decision. He said:

“When you want that diversity to shine within our federal system, there are going to be rules and proceedings that are maybe going to be out of sync with what other states would do. It’s the beauty of the system and that’s where the differences among our 50 states in points of view ought to express themselves.”

When asked about the court’s decision in the case of Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage, he said, “You’re not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too.” He gave the same answer when asked about a list of other issues.

The senator later walked back his remarks on interracial marriage, saying he “misunderstood” the questions and noted that there is “no question that the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind based on race.”

In an absurdly dishonest piece for The Nation, author Jane Dailey used Braun’s remarks to argue that conservatives are opposed to interracial marriage and that they might attempt to enact legislation designed to limit it. It was the typical race-based fear-mongering that has become so popular on the left.

In her piece, Dailey discussed how attitudes on interracial relationships have changed over the years. She wrote:

Curiously, despite the absence of a focused political backlash to Loving, public opinion polls showed that Americans were slow to accept the idea of interracial marriage. A year after the decision, in 1968, 72 percent of Americans disapproved. A decade later, that number had declined significantly, but still stood at 54 percent. It wasn’t until 1997 that a majority of Americans approved. By 2021, only 3 percent disapproved. That same poll, however, also found a marked partisan difference in attitudes, with 7 percent of Republicans disapproving of interracial marriage versus just 2 percent of Democrats. Perhaps Senator Braun was seeking to address these voters’ concerns with his comments on Loving.

She should have stopped there. The fact that only seven percent of people identifying as Republicans oppose interracial marriages should have already shown Dailey that nobody is trying to threaten folks who marry outside of their race. But that would require a level of honesty rarely seen among progressives, wouldn’t it?

Dailey then attempts to tie in conservative opinions on same-sex marriage and religious freedoms as a way to explain how they could mount an attack against interracial marriages, pointing out that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who supported the practice, stated that “many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises.”

The author also cited Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas’ views on same-sex marriage, noting how they referred to the case of Kim Davis who refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples due to her religious beliefs in a memo. “Davis found herself faced with a choice between her religious beliefs and her job,” the memo read.

This led to what Dailey seems to believe is a killer argument: Couldn’t they use these same arguments against interracial couples? She wrote:

If conservative justices like Thomas and Alito are as appalled as they say by the damage that Obergefell has done to religious liberty, why shouldn’t they focus their ire on Loving too? Is not interracial marriage as “novel” a constitutional right as same-sex marriage? Does it not also constrict religious liberty, by their logic? If protecting religious liberty means carving out exemptions for bakers and florists who don’t want to serve same-sex couples, wouldn’t it follow that people who oppose interracial marriage for religious reasons should have a similar right to deny interracial couples service in their restaurants, or the right to stay in their hotels? Do politicians like Braun and jurists like Thomas and Alito believe that there are “decent and honorable” reasons for opposing interracial marriage?

Oddly enough, the author once again undermines her own argument by acknowledging that because Clarence Thomas is a black man married to a white woman, “the question may prove slightly more complicated.”

Here’s the bottom line: People like Dailey are full of bovine excrement and they know it. Conservatives are not seeking to allow states to outlaw interracial marriages. She can’t name a single Republican official who is pushing for such a measure. Even if they did, the Constitution would not allow for such a law, as Braun acknowledged.

Dailey was simply adding her voice to the chorus of dishonest progressives pretending that Republicans are set on oppressing black and brown Americans. The very idea that interracial marriage is under attack is demonstrably false – but this is part and parcel of progressives’ penchant for weaponizing non-white Americans and exploiting them for political gain. Fortunately, this particular line of attack failed to get any traction because even those who would love to believe it know they have absolutely no chance of convincing the American public to believe such drivel.