On this Valentine’s Day I am reminded of no greater challenge to our country’s democracy than marriage equality for same-sex couples.

With same-sex couples bereft of the option to marry, except in Massachusetts, they are given in some states “the separate but equal” option of civil union, and in others no formal recognition. However, civil unions deny these couples 1,049 federal and approximately 400 state benefits and privileges conferred to married couples.

But marriage has always been a divisive political issue in the United States and the debate is not new.

African Americans, in particular, have always had a tenuous relationship with the institution of marriage; one can argue that the topic of marriage equality in the U.S. has always been a black issue. African-American slaves were forbidden to marry until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Prior to that, my ancestors had to "jump over the broom" - an African-American tradition - to legalize their nuptials before a crowd of witnesses.

A century later the debate concerning interracial marriages between black and white Americans was brewing, highlighting that when people are given the freedom to choose their mates they will also fall in love with people outside of their race. Married to a white man, Mildred Loving and her husband were indicted by a Virginia grand jury in October 1958 for violating the state’s “Racial Integrity Act of 1924.”

The trial judge stated the following to the guilty couple:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

The trial judge suspended their sentences on the condition the Lovings leave Virginia and not return to the state together for 25 years. The Lovings initially agreed and left, but returned soon after and decided to fight their case. Mildred Loving gained notoriety when the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1967, decided in her favor that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. This year, we mark the 40th anniversary of that decision.

And no state today in this country can prohibit such a union, although many individuals still disapprove.

The last form of discrimination within the institution of marriage is same-sex unions. Not until the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, explicitly defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, the federal government had not established its own definition, and any marriage recognized by the state was also then recognized by the government.

Multiple family structures presented by same-sex marriages should not be a new concept for the African-American community because these family structures are what have saved and what are still saving African-American families. A grandmother or an aunt and uncle - straight or gay - raising us in their loving homes have anchored our families through the centuries. And these multiple family structures, which we have had to devise as a model of resistance and liberation, have always, by example, shown the rest of society what really constitutes family.

Historically, it has been about saving black families, with its focus on spiritual content and not physical composition. Contextually, it's about raising and protecting our families. It is same-sex couples raising their siblings' or other family members' children because those family members have died of AIDS or are incarcerated or are too sick.

So I ask: why our opposition or indifference to same-sex marriage?

The concept of marriage as solely a heterosexual enterprise gets its genesis from the Adam and Eve narrative in the Bible. Although God introduced the couple to each other, God never married them; God merely blessed the union. However, the belief that marriage is only for the union of one man and one woman is always seen at protests where opponents carry placards boasting their biblical proscription ” God made Adam for Eve, not Steve!”.

History, however, has shown us that people will fight for love’s integrity, even when it is against popular opinion, violating both state and federal laws, and possibly causing them their lives.

Case in point: the beheading of St. Valentine in Rome in 270 A.D.

When Emperor Claudius II issued an edict abolishing marriage because married men hated to leave their families for battle, Valentine, known then as the “friend to lovers” secretly joined them in holy matrimony. While awaiting his execution, Valentine fell in love with the jailer’s daughter, and in his farewell message to his lover, he penned “From your Valentine!”

Both Mildred Loving and St. Valentine knew the importance of saving families. And today many of us are free to love the person we are with because of the Loving-spirit of Mildred and the justice acts of St. Valentine.

BC columnist Rev. Irene Monroe is a religion columnist, public theologian, and speaker. She is a Ford Fellow and doctoral candidate at Harvard Divinity School. As an African American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is www.irenemonroe.com. Click here to contact Rev. Monroe.