CFML is NOT universally hard to understand. I have been programming over 25 years, and use/have used all kinds of languages. CFML is just another tool.
If you don't like tag based language, you can use pure scripting in CFML pages. Also, nothing in CFML requires or even leads ANYONE to use table based layout. I don't know where you got that idea from.
When i first looked at CFML I had distaste for what i saw. The problem is, what i saw was other peoples bad code. Once i really dove in and started writing CFML myself, i found it is like any other language in that, you can write beautiful, clean, easy to understand and modify code.
CFML has a LOT of things built into it that make db backed web development VERY nice, including:
Db queries and transactions as a first class language member.
Pdf generation, ftp access, email sending, graphing, ALL are first class language features, not to mention native use of java libraries.
Don't get me wrong, i see the value in frameworks like ROR. I just think CFML gets a bad rep when it does not deserve it.