http://www.au.org/media/church-and-state/archives/2010/12/bias-in-black-and-white.html

From the article:

"The Golden State legal tussle has many parallels to the struggle to end bans on interracial marriage. Back then, some ministers and government officials fulminated against "race mixing" and argued that God did not favor such unions.

In Virginia, a trial judge named Leon M. Bazile wrote that the state had no obligation to recognize an interracial couple’s marriage that had been performed in Washington, D.C., penning a passage that has since become infamous: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

Bazile’s overt racism and bizarre theology grate on today’s ears. Yet religiously grounded arguments against same-sex marriage are still heard. In fact, at times the debate sounds less like a legal and public policy discussion than it does a medieval dispute over the fine points of theology.

Americans United says that fact makes California’s ban on same-sex marriage suspect. The ban, AU argues in a recent friend-of-the-court brief, is based on intolerance, pseudo-science and religious dogma, not legitimate public policy concerns.

The brief, filed Oct. 25 with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asserts that opposition to marriage equality for gay couples reflects the same baseless and inappropriate considerations that once were used to deny marriage rights to slaves and interracial couples.

AU’s interest in the issue escalated sharply in 2008, when Proposition 8 passed narrowly and took away the right of same-sex couples to marry. The debate leading up to the vote was often wrapped in religious rhetoric. In fact, the drive to enact the measure was funded and staffed primarily by fundamentalist Protestant churches, the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons).

After Proposition 8 passed, media reports surfaced that the Mormons had poured some $22 million into the campaign--even though church members account for less than 2 percent of California residents.

Many Californians were unsettled to learn that a church based in Utah had spent so much money to make California law conform to its dogma. When a federal court challenge was mounted, church-state concerns took center stage.

In August, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8 violated the U.S. Constitution. The state constitutional amendment, Walker
held, imposed a private moral viewpoint and did not advance a legitimate state interest.

"Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians," Walker wrote in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. "The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples."

The case was appealed and is now pending before the 9th Circuit Court.

Groups that defend church-state separation and civil liberties are speaking out. They are making the point that U.S. law cannot be based on one interpretation of the Bible."

This is a great article on the subject and definitely worth the read.