Suppose a white person and a person within any of the prohibited classes do attempt to intermarry. What is the legal result? Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Utah declare that such a marriage is void; Colorado, Missouri, and Virginia, that it is absolutely void; Arizona, Georgia, Oregon, and Tennessee, that it is null and void; Delaware and Mississippi, that it is unlawful and void; and Arkansas, California, and Idaho, that it is illegal and void. The law of Florida declares that such a marriage is unlawful, utterly null and void and the issue bastards and so incapable of inheriting. Louisiana provides that such a marriage is prohibited, the celebration of it forbidden, that the celebration carries with it no effect, and that the marriage is null and void. South Carolina enacts that it is “utterly null and void and of none effect.” The only legal effect of a marriage thus declared void is to impose criminal liability upon the parties to it. The result is precisely the same as if no license had been obtained or ceremony performed and the parties had been indulging in illicit relations. A Virginia decision says: “No matter by what ceremonies or solemnities, such marriage would have been the merest nullity, and the parties must have been regarded under our laws, as lewdly associating and cohabiting together....”[191] The other States which prohibit intermarriage simply declare that marriage between white persons and Negroes is illegal and prescribe a punishment for the violation of the statute against miscegenation, but do not further define the legal effect of such a marriage contract. But whether the marriage is declared “void” or “null and void” or “absolutely void” or only “illegal,” the result is the same. PUNISHMENT FOR INTERMARRIAGE