When confronted with startling events, I find it best to take a beat, exhale, and remind myself that whatever happens, my dog loves me and football season is almost here. Not so with Texas Republicans, who reacted to the Supreme Court’s shocking decision to treat gay folks just like regular Americans with the kind of apocalyptic histrionics one normally hears from street-corner preachers who’ve been left in the August sun for too long.

Calling the Supreme Court decision a “direct assault on the 10th Amendment and the sovereignty of Texas,” the Texas House Republican Caucus issued something that was less a policy statement than a rambling manifesto one usually finds on the laptop of an unhinged individual after he’s done something horrible, which in this case is not far off.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is apparently a lawyer, struck his best George Wallace pose when he tweeted, “Marriage was defined by God. No man can redefine it. We will defend our religious liberties.”

His protege Ted Cruz, who has argued before the Supreme Court enough times to know better, called the decision to allow two people who share the same things in their swimsuit areas to get married tantamount to “liberal intolerance and fascism.”

But then he one-upped himself: “Today is some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history,” he said about the span of time from the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare to the ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.

Yes, letting gay people get married is just as bad as 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the British setting the White House on fire, and Justice Anthony Kennedy is surely no different than Joe Stalin or Saddam Hussein. The Battle of Antietam has nothing on letting gays and lesbians get married. That’s not a sunset. It’s the sky filling with the blood of the innocent as you sip the margarita of the self-righteous.

Dumb is doing land-rush business in Texas since gay couples got permission to go stand in line at the county courthouse just like the rest of us. Some day, it’ll be fun to read these quotes out loud and watch today’s Texas Republicans try to insist that they never really meant it the way it sounded and that we are taking them out of context.

Until then, though, we have to deal with the wrongheaded notion the issuance of a government certificate is an expression of religious faith. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton thinks that public servants have a religious freedom to withhold government services from some people, a legal opinion that makes we want to confirm that Paxton went to law school.

Let’s make this simple: The Post Office has to deliver the mail to you even if you’re a Muslim, Christian, or Yankee fan. Hindus and Jews work alongside Christians to cut Social Security checks, fill potholes, and collect taxes. We’re not done yet, but our journey towards a future in which we are all equal under the law makes us a more perfect union. We hold these things to be self-evident. I read that somewhere.

What the government can’t do is treat different classes of people differently than another, such as providing water fountains for straight people and other water fountains for the gays. Government is not a restaurant. Clerks do not reserve the right to refuse service to certain people because it would otherwise offend what they insist are religious convictions but look more like political beliefs.

Paxton also said, “Texas must speak with one voice against this lawlessness.” Finally, we agree on something. Texas Republicans don’t have to like gay marriage, and there are some who never will just as there are those who still oppose mixed-race marriages, bless their hearts.

But if you insist that an expansion of freedom for all limits your religious freedom, if your faith can only be expressed by a government that limits individual liberty, then I’d advise you to take a beat, exhale and remind yourself that if we can survive the Civil War, then we can survive gays and lesbians getting old and boring together, too.

It’ll be OK, I promise. Now do your jobs.

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Jason Stanford is a regular contributor to the Austin American-Statesman, a Democratic consultant and a Truman National Security Project partner. You can email him at stanford@oppresearch.com and follow him on Twitter @JasStanford.

18 replies on “STANFORD: Texas GOP’s terrible reaction to gay marriage ruling”

  1. Well, Mr. Stanford, your president said ‘global warming is more dangerous than ISIS’ How’d that strike you? Did you exhale, take a breath, wait a moment?

    1. Did you genius? Why don’t you do us all a favor and just hold yours. How does that strike you?

  2. BTW, the terminology of ‘gay’ is wrong, they ARE homosexuals, and also abnormal.

  3. This obtuse reporting is certainly an example of how naive “journalists” attempt to create a normal society by blithely joking about issues that are so profound that they can not be ignored. Even if this author is opposed to conservative values, to report in such a way that makes everything so “cute” and harmless is, well, ignorant at best. How could redefining the foundation of America, Western Civilization and the history of the world, that are all based on the cornerstone of heterosexual marriage NOT be an upheaval the likes of which the world has never known. Not even the ancient Romans vaulted homosexuality to the status of marriage. (In fact they would have laughed at and ridiculed us for being so foolish, knowing that homosexuality had its place in their lives but never marriage.) Whatever one believes about right or wrong on this issue, to report that everything is merely no big deal is the height of shallowness.

    1. For you it’s a big deal. For the majority of American citizens including myself who support gay marriage it’s no longer a “big deal”. “Height of shallowness” you say? You might want to rethink that claim. JMO.

        1. Gallup May 19, 2015 poll. Record high 60% of Americans Support Same Sex Marriage. May 21, 2015 poll. Same Sex Marriage Support Reaches New High 55%.

          1. Yes, that’s what one poll says, hardly exhaustive. If your reasoning is only about pols then one can justify anything with a pol instead of reason, love and truth.
            David H. Pickup

          2. I believe Gallup is probably the most reliable pollster in this country. Stick with your “reason, love and truth”. I’ll go with the scientific methods employed by Gallup to arrive at a reasoned conclusion concerning how the “majority” of Americans support gay marriage.

          4. With a 60% majority according to the May 19 2015 poll, I’d say the possibility of solid science regarding “public opinion” prevails. Anything else?

          5. Sure, especially since it doesn’t make sense. If 60% of people did NOT believe in Gay marriage, then by your reasoning we must all obey and think that. My guess is that if that were the case, then you’d find some other approach to science.
            David H. Pickup
            Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
            Dallas, TX &
            Encino, CA
            Ph. (818) 481-2745
            Fax- (800) 825-1093
            http://www.davidpickuplmft.com

          6. Think and obey what you like. It’s not my concern. I’ll go with what Gallup says. Sixty percent of Americans support the right of gays to marry.

            Cheers!

          7. And you actually buy the statements of poll participants to be accurate. Why don’t the aactual votes counted, correspond to the polls. Polls are used by MSM to give their host something to read on the teleprompter and project they know something about something. Like our president.
            And if you believe in polls, then why Did Mike Coffman defeat |Andy Romonoff by 9 % points in race heavily financed by Washington PACs, and DNC and poll called for ‘to close to call’. Really??? Or the Israeli election with seats lost by assured winners, and Prime Minister solidly in the saddle.
            Polls are used to raise funds from the dumb and uninformed, in see saw up and down, so MSM gets funds to stay in business when they do not report new. Just gossip.

    2. It’s not reporting, Chicken Little. It’s an opinion by a columnist. That’s why it appears in the Opinion section. That’s why the byline reads, “contributing columnist.”

      You understand opinion, don’t you? That’s what Fox News broadcasts all day long. That’s what talk radio spews all day long. That’s what all the doom and gloom in your comment is. You formed your chicken little opinion by listening to opinions from morons like Jerry Falwell.

      Watch out for all those hurricanes that are a-coming because of teh gayz!

      1. I don’t see any reason to discuss this with anyone who uses put-down’s and demeaning language.
        David H. Pickup
        Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
        Dallas, TX &
        Encino, CA
        Ph. (818) 481-2745
        Fax- (800) 825-1093
        http://www.davidpickuplmft.com

        1. There is no discussion. You don’t know the difference between an opinion piece and a news article. End of discussion, Rev. Fallible. I mean Rev. Fallwell.

  4. This article seems to say that Liberals (Democrats) all support same-sex marriage and all GOP (Republicans) are against it. I suspect there are some of each in the respective parties. I guess that reporters can’t find anything important to write about!

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