Flash back about 60 years in the US - Bible used to justify segregation

I'll start with this:

We've seen segregation be considered invincible one day, and then in a blink of an eye seen it redefined and defiled. We've seen the principle of segregation be betrayed by people who swore to voters they would protect it. We've seen some people abandon the fight, whether out of fear or seeing many who remained vigilant punished and persecuted. And we've seen constitutionally-guaranteed rights such as the right to religious liberty be superseded by invented concepts that not only are not rights, they also are not right.

Unbelievable isn't it. An anachronism in today's society. Yet the truth is that they used the Bible to justify segregating black people from white people. 

It actually stayed around for long after segregation became illegal over there. In the Pentecostal church where I got my bachelor's degree in theology (recognised by the State of Minnesota) the old codger who founded the Bible college used to call the students together at times to bla this and that. This was at the start of the 1980's

On this occasion I had a black student sitting right next to me. Lovely guy, albeit a big chip on his shoulder about American racism. Who could blame him over there? I however had grown up in New Zealand where the prefects in high school were at times Maori. In fact Maori is an official second language over there. In short racism to me was literally a foreign concept.

So on this occasion when the old founding codger was bla-ing away in Minnesota, all student ears listening to what was supposed to be his old codger words of wisdom, I was shocked at what he said. 

Apparently the black guy sitting next to me and a white girl in the college had taken an affection to each other, and this was evidently why we'd all been called in for the founding codger (from the old school) to set things straight. 

To my complete horror, he said words to the effect of "If you're a black person [the black person next to me was the only one there at the time] don't lower yourself to be with a white woman." I looked at the black person next to me and saw the disgust and revoltion on his face. I felt the same.

Yet this is what was preached only a few decades ago, and they used the Bible to justify it. After reading the Bible three times from cover to cover during that time I still don't have the faintest idea how they did that.

So getting back to the above quote..... It's not from 60 years ago. It's from the present, about gay marriage. Here's the direct quote:

We've seen marriage be considered invincible one day, and then in a blink of an eye seen it redefined and defiled. We've seen the principle of traditional marriage be betrayed by people who swore to voters they would protect it. We've seen some people abandon the fight, whether out of fear or seeing many who remained vigilant punished and persecuted. And we've seen constitutionally-guaranteed rights such as the right to religious liberty be superseded by invented concepts that not only are not rights, they also are not right. The US National Organisation for Marriage

I replaced two phrases, that's all, to illustrate the comparison of how the Bible can be used to justify something that is today unthinkable. In 60 years the same will happen with gay marriage, and people will look back asking how the fuck could Christians be so cruel to fellow man because their Bible, as we look back now at how they did that to US black citizens.