A slew of bills in the Tennessee Legislature target LGBTQ individuals and their children, as well as children in need of homes, in an onslaught of hate and discrimination.
The Tennessee Equality Project, the state LGBTQ legislative advocacy organization, calls the bills a “slate of hate”:
- Four bills (two in each house) would allow “religious exemptions” in child services—thinly veiled excuses to discriminate against LGBTQ prospective parents, LGBTQ youth, and people of other identities (like Jews), even if the child service agencies are receiving taxpayer money. I’ve written about such bills once or twice before (well, more than that, but those two pieces will give you the overview). Ten states currently permit such discrimination (Alabama, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia); Tennessee could be number 11. The sponsor of one of the House bills apparently withdrew it today, but told the Tennessean that he plans to co-sponsor or support a similar bill.
- Another pair of bills, one in each house, would require the state government to offer businesses public contracts or grants even if they discriminate under the guise of religious beliefs.
- “Indecent exposure” bills in both houses that would amend current law “to include incidents occurring in a restroom, locker room, dressing room, or shower, designated for single-sex, multi-person use, if the offender is a member of the opposite sex than the sex designated for use.” Additionally, “a medical, psychiatric, or psychological diagnosis of gender dysphoria, gender confusion, or similar conditions, in the absence of untreated mental conditions, such as schizophrenia, will not serve as a defense to the offense of indecent exposure.” Transgender people cannot legally change the gender on their birth certificates in the state. Couple that with the proposed law, and it would criminalize being transgender and using a multi-purpose locker or dressing room.
- On top of that, bills in both houses would require the Attorney General to defend school districts that force transgender students to use bathrooms corresponding to their assigned sex at birth.
- Finally, a set of bills would define marriage in the state as “between one man and one woman … regardless of any court decision to the contrary. This bill states that the United States Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, and any other decision purporting to strike down natural marriage, is unauthoritative, void, and of no effect.”
There are more than 184,000 LGBTQ people in Tennessee; 26 percent of them, or nearly 48,000, are raising children, according to the Movement Advancement Project. These bills are a shameful attack on them and on the many others of different identities who could be caught up in the groundswell of hate. Visit the Tennessee Equality Project or follow them on Facebook or Twitter for more on the bills and what you can do to help.