Strom Thurmond switched parties in order to throw his support to Goldwater, but I don’t think he was the reason Barry opposed the bill. Goldwater opposed the bill because he didn’t believe that the national government had the right to tell individual Americans what they were permitted to think. That used to be a fundamental character of conservatives. Today, the revised Conservative Version 2.0 thinks it’s just swell. And then they wonder how in the world Washington DC became powerful enough to intrude into every other aspect of their lives.
OK, I stand corrected, Thurmond did switch parties in order to support Goldwater. He was bucking the Democrat establishment before, as a Democrat by supporting such things like Republican nominees to the bench and Republican legislation up for a vote for example. The Democrats were threatening to strip him of his committee positions but he bailed on them before they even had a chance to do it.