What is Love

So I am writing a paper for my history class on the link between "the inherent criminality of blacks" and miscegenation laws in the United States.  To say that researching this topic is both depressing and heartbreaking is an understatement.  To review medical journals and see terms like mongrel and hybrid thrown about in reference to children makes me sick to my core.  However, there is a very important reason to learn about the past.  We must understand where we came from in order to keep from going there again.  It is rather disturbing to see the government regulate who a person can marry but well that is still going on.  Which begs the question, how far have we come as a society?  Have we really become the progressive society that we pretend to be?  Or are we simply a bunch of fakes that pay really good lip service to ideals that we claim to have?  The way I view it people should only be judged by their character and actions and nothing else.  Who a person loves is their business and no matter what religion I am, it is ultimately NOT my place to judge.  My faith taught me to love my fellow man and that whatever actions they take will be between them and God, not me.  Call me crazy but I thought that this is what Christianity was all about.  So I think the question isn't really what is love but perhaps a better question is why not love?

Below is a snippet of my introduction for my history paper.  All comments are welcome.

Boy meets girl.  They fall in love.  They get married.  They have kids.  They live happily ever after.  This is the formula for every story that we were told as children.  This is what we were supposed to strive for in our lives.  This idea of love and a happily ever after.  So what happens if one of the people in this equation is black?  Does this make a difference?  For the vast majority of people the answer is a resounding no.  The only thing that matters in this equation is the love, not who we love.  However, this was not the case for so many.  Those that felt that race was an important part of the equation set out to make it impossible aka illegal and they succeeded in many places.  This notion that the government can regulate who we can and can't love is not one that has died out today but I get ahead of myself.