A Texas state of mind

Everything, it seems, is bigger in Texas: its sky, its fields, its slabs of red meat.

Such expansiveness, however, does not extend to include the state population’s general beliefs on morality and politics—a realization that dawned on me during a recent trip to the Lone Star state to visit family.

Here’s what happens when you leave California and venture somewhere even remotely Bible Belt-ish: You learn, way too clearly, just how divided the country really is, be it politically or spiritually.

Or, in my case at least, you relearn it.

I was born in Texas and, after moving around for several years, spent many of my formative years—ages 6 to 13 to be exact—in Austin, a city that is, by Texas standards at least, very liberal.

Much of the rest of the state, however, is decidedly not.

I know—shocker.

Fox News is the state’s most popular source of media information, after all, according to a new Forbes study, “The Media Map.” (For a point of reference, by the way, Montana and Mississippi are the nation’s other two biggest Fox supporters.)

Still, when you’re an Austin kid with parents who vote Democrat, it’s easy to think that the rest of the people there are the same—progressive and generally accepting of people with “different” lifestyles and beliefs.

After I moved away, however, return trips to Texas—primarily to the Dallas-Forth Worth area to visit my grandparents—showed me that much of the rest of the state hardly followed Austin’s lead. Rather, during those excursions, I routinely overheard racial and homophobic slurs dropped in casual conversation—in line at the grocery store, at restaurants, at the Vacation Bible School camps in which my grandparents insisted on enrolling me.

On this particular trip, Texas’ deeply branded beliefs came back into sharp relief, illustrated in the Bible phrases plastered behind cash register counters and on bumper stickers; evident in the national and state flags decorating countless front porches and waving from countless cars. Painfully obvious by way of the overheard racial and homophobic slurs. Clearly manifested in the framed photographs of Gov. Rick Perry that hang on numerous diner and shop walls—right next to the aging photos of former conservative politician Ross Perot, who ran on the Independent Reform ticket in 1992.

The state, of course, is solidly red—nearly 56 percent of Texans voted Republican during the 2008 presidential election. Likewise, the state known as the “buckle” of the Bible Belt is home to a concrete majority: A whopping combined 73 percent of residents identify as either Catholic or some denomination of Christian, according to 2010 census data.

Meanwhile, back home in California, I’ve found, it’s easy to live in a social, cultural and political bubble.

Which is not to say that there aren’t those who are ultra-conservative or ultra-religious here. We live in the state where voters approved Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, after all. There are anti-abortion protests and religious zealots. There is homophobia, not to mention racism and a fanatical reliance on the Bible to prove a point.

And yet it doesn’t feel as prevalent here as it does nearly halfway across the country, where waitresses regularly bless you on God’s behalf and every other billboard seems to be selling drivers on a church, a Republican political candidate or various pro-life convictions.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Texas.

People there are—if you happen to look like them and, presumptively, think like them—friendly to a fault. This is to say nothing of the state’s exquisite terrain, its undeniable pioneer spirit, its vastness, its raw, rugged scenery, its breathtaking geographical openness.

Almost everything’s bigger in Texas—if only more of the minds of the people who lived there actually boasted such enormity when it came to diversity and tolerance.