Supreme Court ruling in Loving vs. Virginia

On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court rendered its unanimous decision overturning a Virginia Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the couple's convictions for violating Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which had outlawed interracial marriage. The opinion declared that bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional, depriving both partners of equal protection under the law, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment. The decision rejected the authority of any state to create a law limiting the right to marry on the basis of race, or to enforce such laws where they existed.^[13][14]

The Supreme Court ruling effectively voided existing interracial marriage laws in 15 mostly Southern states, including all the states of the former Confederacy. A few states, notably Alabama, nevertheless failed to repeal their anti-miscegenation laws, though they could no longer be enforced. Alabama did not officially repeal its ban on interracial marriage until 2000, when the voters in a special election struck an anti-miscegenation clause from the state constitution. After the Loving ruling, Alabama continued to enforce its interracial marriage laws until 1970.^[11][12]

Richard Loving died aged 41 in 1975 in Caroline County, Virginia, killed by a drunk driver.^[15] Mildred Loving died of pneumonia on May 2, 2008, in Milford, Virginia, aged 68.^[16]

Nuclear freeze and death with dignity resolutions

In early 1983, Cohen backed a nuclear freeze resolution before the Virginia State Senate Rules Committee, which ultimately was voted down 10–4 on February 8. Cohen's resolution decried the "huge sums of money being spent testing, producing, and deploying nuclear warheads and weapons" and the strain it placed on the rest of the federal budget. It further called for bi-lateral talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to halt the further production of such weapons. A chief critic of the bill was Bernard F. Halloran, a special assistant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.^[19]  

In early 1983, the Virginia House passed Cohen's "Death with Dignity" bill. The measure allowed terminally ill patients to determine whether they wanted to go through "heroic artificial means to keep their bodies alive when there was no hope of recovery". On February 21, 1983, the Virginia Senate passed the "Natural Death Act", which relieved physicians of criminal and civil liability once they, with the consent of the terminally ill patient or that person's family, disconnected medical devices designed to keep the patient alive. The bill required that the patient be in terminal condition, and that there must be "no reasonable expectation of recovery". Doctors who felt they could not morally comply with the wishes of the terminally ill patient or family member to disconnect the patient's regulator could transfer the care of the patient to another doctor.^[20]

Other notable stances

In February 1984, Cohen strongly opposed a bill that prevented young men who had not registered with the Selective Service System from attending state colleges and receiving financial aid. The bill passed the Virginia House with a vote of 67–33, but had yet to be brought before the Virginia Senate.^[21]

Cohen co-authored a blog entry in 2007 for the Huffington Post invoking his experience in Loving v. Virginia to support the legalization of same sex marriage.^[22]