This is the man I spoke of in my previous post; this is from the Faith in America website:
http://www.faithinamerica.info/Mitchell Gold, the founder of Faith In America, delivered an inspiring message. Gold, who is Jewish, traced the roots of religion-based bigotry, in part by retracing his own life experiences. His first experience with religion-based bigotry came as a 5th grader living in Trenton, New Jersey in a predominantly Christian neighborhood. When he rode his bicycle over to the person he considered his best friend one day and discovered a birthday party taking place in his honor, he asked of his friend why he had not been invited. His friend explained to him that he couldn't invite him because he was Jewish. He recounted his second childhood experience when a neighborhood kid he considered a friend ordered him off his property. When he asked why, the boy told him that the nuns at the Catholic Church he had attended told him bad things about Jews that day in school.
If facing bigotry because of his religion wasn't bad enough, Gold would discover as teen-ager that he was gay. He promised himself that he would kill himself by the time he reached 21 if he hadn't figured out how to change his sexual orientation. Fortunately, he moved to New York City, where a whole different perspective on life emerged for him in the comfort of meeting others just like him. Gold and his partner later moved to North Carolina of all places where he worked in the furniture industry. Eventually, Gold acquired his own furniture company in Hickory, North Carolina, which has grown into a successful company employing more than 800 workers.
Through his interaction with the workers at his factory, he learned that people's prejudices were often based upon a lack of understanding and exposure to people of a different religion and sexual orientation. He learned that people could be taught in a way that would disabuse them of wrong-headed notions they learned growing up in fundamentalist Christian families and communities. Gold pointed to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and his recollection of George Wallace standing with a Bible in his hand, citing chapter and verse why black people were not entitled to equality with white people, and how 36 states at one point had laws banning interracial marriages. Would true Christian believers today argue that the Bible condones the enslavement of black people or the treatment of women as second-class citizens as was once argued in the not-so-distant past Gold asks? So too will it pass and people will come to accept equality for gays and lesbians just like they did blacks and women Gold believes.