Jared M. Trujillo

In 2005 as a high school senior in Chicago, I found myself locked in a debate with my government teacher about gay marriage. He smugly declared “It’s not discrimination! Illinois’ marriage ban prohibits gay and straight people alike from marrying someone of the same sex.” I stared at him in disbelief with a dropped jaw and furrowed brow, as I thought I was doomed to fail the AP exam with the man who made that argument as my teacher. He mistook this look as defeat. Little did I know his “equal application theory” argument had a long pedigree stretching back to Pace v. Alabama in 1883, where the Supreme Court upheld an anti-miscegenation law because it equally punished Black and white participants.