Several countries, including the United States and Canada, have historically had anti-miscegenation laws in place to prevent interracial marriages. These laws are now considered a direct infringement upon the civil rights of interracial couples and the last such law in the United States was struck down in 1967 (Loving v. Virginia). A key argument in support of same-sex marriage is that laws banning same-sex marriage are highly analogous to laws banning interracial marriage; a ban on same-sex marriage can therefore be seen as a form of discrimination infringing upon the civil rights of same-sex couples. In response, opponents of same-sex marriage argue that men and women are fundamentally different from one another, whereas interracial couples still fit within the "one man and one woman" definition of marriage. They also point out that in 1972, after the Minnesota Supreme Court's ruling in Baker v. Nelson specifically distinguished Loving as not being applicable to the same-sex marriage debate, the United States Supreme Court dismissed the appeal "for want of a substantial federal question." Such a dismissal constitutes a decision on the merits of the case, and as such, is binding precedent on all lower Federal Courts.