Most people acknowledge today that it was wrong 40 years ago to deny couples who loved each other the right to marry, the freedom to marry, simply because of one’s own religious belief. We want to remind people of past mistakes. This 40th anniversary of Loving is the perfect opportunity to do that. The similarity [to anti-gay rhetoric] is it’s religious-based discrimination. -Mitchell Gold, Faith In America

I’m laying down odds and taking bets. Contact me.     (j/k!)

Mr. Gold, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor.

Scriptual Showdown

Arguing for marriage equality for everyone, an activist group started by furniture designer Mitchell Gold seeks to remind Americans that interracial marriage was banned just a few decades ago.
(Julie Scelfo, Newsweek)

Gold: ‘There’s so much talk today in politics about religion, and frankly too often at that intersection is discrimination’

June 8, 2007 - For years, Mitchell Gold, a founder of the popular furniture company Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, has been irritated by what he sees as fundamentalist Christians- use of the Bible to justify withholding civil rights from gays. Scripture, Gold argues, was used in the past to defend slavery, prohibit interracial marriage and prevent women from voting. Frustrated that few politicians dare to confront anyone brandishing a Bible, in 2005 Gold formed the group Faith In America (FIA), which says its goals are to educate people about the past “misuse” of religion and scripture. FIA’s latest campaign is centered on next week’s 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage, which had been supported by a Virginia judge who ruled the intention of “Almighty God” was to keep the races separate.
[...]

I think many politicians are afraid to say somebody using their Bible is wrong. Secular civil-rights groups are very uncomfortable. And we feel enough harm has been done, it’s time to stop this, to stand up and have the courage to say to folks, this really is not right, to think back about what types of harm this kind of religious thinking has done in the past. When he realized the harm he was causing, Jerry Falwell in the 1970s apologized to African-Americans for [previously] supporting segregation. We-re hoping that good Americans today will recognize if they-re using their biblical beliefs to deny gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people of their full and equal rights, that’s it’s wrong and harmful.

Full article at MSNBC.com