“Thank God for Mississippi.”

– Unofficial slogan of Alabama

A new survey from Public Policy Polling finds that 46 percent of Mississippi Republicans not only oppose interracial marriage, they believe that individuals who marry someone of another race should go to jail.

On a positive note, it is at least progress that these Mississippi racists see prison time — not lynching — as an adequate penalty for race mixing.

Just 40 percent of GOP voters in the state say they think interracial marriage should remain legal, while 14 percent are not sure.

These results are especially interesting considering the fact that there are few places where Pres. Obama, the product of an interracial marriage, is more despised than Mississippi.

As has often been reported here, in 1968, the year after the Supreme Court decriminalized interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia, Gallup found that 72 percent of Americans opposed interracial marriage. Just 20 percent approved.

It wasn’t until 1991 that a plurality supported mixed-race marriage nationwide, 48 percent to 42 percent.

A Pew Poll found that 45 percent of Americans support gay marriage, 46 percent oppose. This is relevant only because this polling shows that if mixed race couples had been forced to wait until their unions received favorable polling,

, which of course means that gay marriage has more than twice the support today that interracial marriage had when it it was made legal.

Finally, credit goes to Andrew Sullivan for connecting the song with the poll.

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