For whom this Bell tolls, it tolls for bigotry and stupidity

I haven’t taken a position on gay marriage one way or the other. I have, however, taken a position on marriage, which is any two adult human beings who love each other and chose of their own free will to display publicly that love through marriage should be able to do so. That’s it. No other qualifications. If you’re an adult, in love, and want to get married, our free society should allow you to do so.

The lead story on the front page of today’s Austin American-Statesman bears the headline "FIRST GAY COUPLE MARRIED IN TEXAS" (yes, the headline was in all capital letters). My first reaction was "Texas finally enters the 20^th century 115 years after the rest of the world" and then I was struck by a tinge of sadness that I live in a world where the marriage of two women who are in love, who have lived together for 31 years, should even be in the news in the first place.

But those emotions turned to anger when I followed the story to the inside pages that featured reaction to this news from a number of people including the village idiot from Magnolia, one Cecil Bell, who also happens to represent that area of southeast Texas in the state House. The last sentence of his reaction, as printed in the Statesman, reads as follows: "I am very conservative myself and I have very strong religious beliefs, and I believe that this is an enormous intrusion on the rights of Texas and it tramples on the religious rights of Texas."

Now I have absolutely no problems with this fool’s conservative leanings and I will defend forever his rights to maintain his own "very strong religious beliefs." However I take extremely strong exception to his statement that this marriage "tramples on the religious rights of Texas."

First of all, this couple was married by a rabbi. Now, I can imagine that in the walled-off world in which Dingdong Bell has erected for himself, he might not even know what a rabbi is. And even if someone tried to tell him, I’m not sure he would accept the facts. I mean, look, the Flat Earth Society is still alive and well and some still dispute the facts of climate change and refuse to acknowledge that "trickle-down economics" doesn’t create jobs because it quits trickling down at the CEO level.

But anyone with the IQ of your average 2-year-old or better will know that if any ordained spiritual leader of a religious congregation performs a ritual ceremony of any kind, the odds are very good that ritual ceremony is not going to trample on the religious rights of the members of that congregation, whether than congregation is in Texas, Alabama, California, Argentina, Russia, anywhere.

But even more important than that is the question: So what if it does? This country was founded on the idea there should be "a separation of church and state." And I gotta tell you, I’m getting damn sick and tired of these people who claim they are "very conservative myself," arguing we should only enact laws as intended by "our founding fathers" no matter what except if those laws contradict their "very strong religious beliefs."

The original illegal immigrants who came to this country came, in large numbers, to escape religious persecution. They knew that the religious teachings of one group may be directly the opposite of the teachings of another. That’s why they established a secular society that protected the freedoms of all religious teachings and beliefs, but made it clear that those beliefs should have no part in civil and criminal law. They knew that most of society’s most horrendous acts were fomented in the name of religion. The root cause of entire conflict in the Middle East today is the result of religious differences, not only among the actual Middle East nations, but also because the United States tried to obliterate the religious teachings of many Middle Eastern cultures and to replace them with our own value systems, not that much different from what Bell is doing through his backward statements on marriage.

This a Bell that needs to stop ringing.