Sincerely Held

You know what makes America great? Religious freedom, that's what. The atheists want to limit our freedoms with "laws," but in America, any sincerely held religious belief trumps their "laws."

So me and Bubba were talking the other day about religious freedom and all that. I have to warn you: Bubba ain't the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

"I'm not so sure about those 'sincerely held religious belief' laws," Bubba told me.

"Well, it means," I explained, "that I don't have to do business with queers because it is my sincerely held belief that God hates queers. Supreme Court even says so."

"Um, I don't think the Supreme Court quite said that," Bubba quibbled.

He wasn't getting it. So I tried another elucidating example.

"And I can beat the crap out of my kids because it is my sincerely held belief that Jesus wants me to. For their own good, of course. My old man used to beat the crap out of me, and look how good I turned out."

"Hmm," Bubba mused. He seemed about to say one thing, then thought better of it, and switched to something else. "But what if some Muslim wants to cut off someone's hand or something because that's sharia law, and that's his sincerely held religious belief?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I had to stop him right there. "When they say 'sincerely held religious belief,' that means for a real religion! And there's only one of those, right? It doesn't count for ... Muslimism, or whatever they call it. You can't have a sincerely held belief in the wrong religion, now can you?"

"But that's your opinion," Bubba replied. "Your sincere opinion, I have no doubt. Other people have very different sincere opinions. See, that's where it gets all tangled up. If you give everyone's opinions veto power over law, that makes for one great, big, chaotic mess. Sanctifying them by the terms 'religious' and 'sincerely held' doesn't make it any better."

Ok, he clearly wasn't getting it, so I thought I'd better change the subject to something more entertaining.

"Hey, Bubba, why don't you just come on down to the town square with me? We're stoning a whore."