In 2009, Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Robert, Louisiana, refused to officiate a civil wedding for an interracial couple. A nearby justice of the peace, on Bardwell's referral, officiated the wedding; the interracial couple sued Keith Bardwell and his wife Beth Bardwell in federal court. After facing wide criticism for his actions, including from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Bardwell resigned on November 3, 2009.
As of 1967, 17 Southern states still had anti-miscegenation laws lthat prohibiting marriage between whites and non-whites.
A 1958 Gallup poll showed that 94% of white Americans disapproved of interracial marriage and even by 1986 only one third of Americans approved. In 1994 the public approval rate for of such marriages had grown to just over a half and it was not until 2011 that the vast majority of Americans were not longer opposed to the marriages between different races.
Approval/disapproval rates varied greatly among different demographic groups (race, gender, age, socioeconomic groups, marital status).
In 1965, Judge Leon Bazile upheld Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia and defended racial segregation and justified it on religious grounds by stating:
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and 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 the races to mix."
Despite having a majority of American public opinion that opposed interracial marriage, the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Loving v. Virginia in 1967 ruled that all anti-miscegenation laws in the 17 states were unconstitutional although it took South Carolina until 1998 and Alabama until 2000 to officially amend their states' constitution.
The Supreme Court decision stated that:
"Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."
Given that the Supreme Court had already established that marriage was "one of the 'basic civil rights of man '" and a " fundamental freedom" that "cannot be infringed by the State," the argument favoring same-sex marriage appears to be on strong constitutional grounds.
If this was back in 1967, Kim Davis could be making the same argument for withholding marriage licences for mixed racial couples based on her religious convictions as she is currently using for same-sex couples.
As late as 2009, a justice of the peace in Robert, Louisiana refused to officiate a civil wedding for an interracial couple, was subsequently sued and forced to resign - by a Republican governor!