Early on in his ministry Billy Graham gave up on seeking to please or understand Bob Jones and his school.  The school attacked Graham as being too liberal.  Graham decided to move on from these fundamentalist circles of the Christian faith.  The school was a notorious hotbed for racism.  President George W. Bush pulled back from the school whenever he was presented with their dating policy.  It forbade interracial dating and Bush's brother was married to a woman of Latin dissent.  The school racial policy had evolved to the dating issue allowing blacks to come to the school, though few took up the invitation.    Klansmen, at times in history, dominated board members as well as Bob Jones Sr. being connected to the group.  The school adhered to the Curse of Ham theory and even taught the doctrine, according to students, in theology classes. The Curse of Ham doctrine states Blacks were cursed by God to be servants to White Peoples.  This stems from the incident with Noah after the flood. I listened to the famous old Easter sermon from Bob Jones on Pentecost.  Jones proclaimed that the idea nations had many tongues means God wanted them to remain separate.  The school is currently trying to distance itself from a racist past.
     The famous court decision denying tax exemption status to Bob Jones University will prove to resurface in future debates on gay marriages and church schools.  The IRS denied tax exemption to BJU because of its racist policies.  The courts upheld this position during the Reagan Administration.  President Reagan was not fond of the ruling thinking it might open up dangerous legal battles against religious freedom.  The American Baptist Convention and Presbyterian denomination denounced the ruling citing it harmed the idea of the First Amendment.  The Baptist Joint Committee fought the ruling claiming it opened up the door to government interference in religion.
     It was argued that people like the crowd at Bob Jones, Black Muslims, and some Jewish sects had the right to hold to segregated views in their faith.     The Southern Poverty Law Center's law suits against the Klan is a similar case in point.  These successful lawsuits have caused some to question government interference in free speech as troubling.  
     In 1954, LBJ stood before the Senate and proposed the bill that gave us 501c3.  That is the idea that tax exempt organizations cannot use their exemption and act like a political action committee.  Johnson was battling an old friend, H.L. Hunt, who was using "religious broadcasts" to attack him and give favorable attention to his opponent.  LBJ was in a close race at the time.
     The Religious Right is almost unanimous in claiming Johnson offended free speech and was just trying to keep truth about his immorality from surfacing.   Did Johnson believe that 501c3 should now apply to offensive religious beliefs the public did not like?  That question is now before the legal experts and folks on both sides of the gay marriage issue are going to deal with this question.  The legal arguments will tend to go back, (they all ready are) to the Bob Jones University ruling.  The legacy of the small college still tends to carry a great deal of weight in the nation.  Its racial policies from the past will be another ghost from the past that impacts legal decisions.