Tag: Tennessee legislature anti-LGBTQ laws

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Memphis Gaydar News News Blog

Lawmakers Target LGBTQ Issues in Schools

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

A number of bills filed in the Tennessee General Assembly’s current session target the LGBTQ community at the state’s public schools. 

The current session kicked off two weeks ago and is off to a slow start. Usually, lawmakers start the session in a flurry of filing bills and getting them before their appropriate committees. However, this year committee schedules have been light, likely due to the fact that lawmakers went to Nashville for three special sessions, the most in Tennessee history. 

Though slow, the session is proving there’s no shortage of anti-LGBTQ sentiment among the many members of the Tennessee legislature. Here are three bills worth watching this session:

Textbook Ban

House Bill 800 by Rep. Bruce Griffey (R-Paris) — The bill would ban textbooks and instruction materials that “promote, normalize, support, or address controversial social issues, such as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender (LGBT) lifestyles.” The bill deems these “lifestyles” as “inappropriate.” 

“The promotion of LGBT issues and lifestyles in public schools offends a significant portion of students, parents, and Tennessee residents with Christian values,” reads the bill. “The promotion of LGBT issues and lifestyles should be subject to the same restrictions and limitations placed on the teaching of religion in public schools.”

This bill was filed last year but did not make it to the floors of the House or Senate. 

Transgender Athletes

Senate Bill 2153 by Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hoenwald) — The bill “prohibits males from participating in public higher education sports that are designated for females.” It also creates a process “for violations that deprive a student of an athletic opportunity or that cause direct or indirect harm to a student at the middle school, high school, or postsecondary level.”

Teachers and pronouns

House Bill 2633 by Rep. Mark Cochran (R-Engelwood) — This would allow school teachers or employees to use whatever pronouns they want for students “if the pronoun does not align with the student’s biological sex.”

It would also insulate school teachers and employees from lawsuits of being fired for “referring to a student using the pronoun aligned with the student’s biological sex instead of the student’s preferred pronoun.”

“In other words, this bill protects school personnel who discriminate against transgender and non-binary students,” said Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project. Research shows that school policies that affirm a student’s gender identity yield better health and academic outcomes.

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News News Blog Uncategorized

Six Things to Know About the Lawsuits Challenging the State’s Anti-Trans Bathroom Law

(Credit Bianca Phillips)

This story is co-published with MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit Memphis newsroom focused on poverty, power, and public policy — issues about which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cared deeply. Find more stories like this at MLK50.com. Subscribe to their newsletter here.

In the past week, two federal lawsuits have been filed against the state’s new bathroom signage law, which takes effect today. The law applies to businesses and other places with multi-stall bathrooms that allow people to use the restroom of the gender with which they identify.

The businesses are required to post signage with the following state-mandated language: “Notice: This facility maintains a policy of allowing the use of restrooms by either biological sex, regardless of the designation on the restroom.”

One lawsuit was filed Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Tennessee. The plaintiffs are Nashville-based restaurateur Bob Bernstein, who founded and manages Bongo Roasting Co., and Kye Sayers, who owns Sanctuary, a performing arts venue and safe space for trans people in Chattanooga. 

The other was filed Wednesday by Mike Curb, owner of Curb Records Inc. in Nashville and properties open to the public. 

Here are six things you should know: 

  1. Their main argument: The law violates the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights. 

The ACLU suit argues it violates plaintiffs’ freedom of speech by legally forcing them “to communicate a misleading and controversial government-mandated message that they would not otherwise display.”

The businesses “do not agree with this characterization of their policies, and they do not want to convey the Tennessee General Assembly’s controversial and stigmatizing message to customers, clients, and staff.”

  1. Both suits ask the court to declare the law unconstitutional and unenforceable.

They call for the court to preliminarily stop state and local officials from enforcing it and say that judgment should eventually be made permanent.  

  1. Plaintiff Mike Curb is a former Republican lieutenant governor of California.

He served in that role from 1979 to 1983 under former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown. Curb was also co-chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign, according to a Curb Inc. press release denouncing Tennessee’s anti-trans legislation, which was sponsored and backed by Republicans.

Along with civil rights activist Harvey Milk, Curb worked to stop California’s Briggs Initiative in 1978, which would have mandated firing teachers who were gay or in support of gay rights.

A coffee menu at Fido coffeehouse and restaurant in Nashville is decorated with LGBTQ flag colors in June. The owner of Fido, Bob Bernstein, is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit  filed against Tennessee over its new anti-trans bathroom law. (Credit: ACLU of Tennessee)

A coffee menu at Fido coffeehouse and restaurant in Nashville is decorated with LGBTQ flag colors in June. The owner of Fido, Bob Bernstein, is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against Tennessee over its new anti-trans bathroom law. Photo courtesy of the ACLU of Tennessee

  1. Curb’s lawsuit argues that the law was a solution in search of a problem.

The law “was not enacted to address any real problem or actual public need,” the suit reads, relying on the words of the law’s House sponsor, Rep. Tim Rudd (R-Murfreesboro), to bolster its argument.

When asked during House floor debate by another lawmaker if there’s any other locality with a similar law, Rudd said he hadn’t researched it but saw a need in Tennessee. “It’s very shocking and can endanger people if they walk into a restroom that’s marked men or women and the opposite sex is standing there. It could scare them. It could provoke violence.”

  1. The law defies medical guidance on sex and ignores the existence of intersex people, according to the ACLU lawsuit.

By using the phrase “biological sex,” the law is unclear and intentionally discriminatory.

“Biological sex” is never defined in state law, and medical professionals say a person’s gender identity should be used for medical and legal purposes, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also argues that the law ignores the existence of intersex people by using the language “either biological sex.” 

  1. Both lawsuits say the signs will hurt businesses by driving away customers and inciting fear.

Posting signs at Curb’s businesses “risks driving away customers and visitors that they want to attract by forcing them to convey a message that conflicts with their corporate values of inclusion, diversity, equality, and respect for all people,” the lawsuit says.

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Opinion The Last Word

Pride Month: A Conversation That Needs to Happen All Year

CREDIT: Blake Billings | Dreamstime.com

It’s Pride Month, and instead of using the month to celebrate the LGBTQ community, unfortunately there are a number of people who would rather spend the month spewing hateful rhetoric.

If you’ve ever heard the malicious “God hates fags” line, it’s not true. It’s a lie. God doesn’t hate anyone. Read the Bible. My teeth clench in horror when I hear people who say they represent the God I believe in spouting hateful lies. But, no matter what you believe about God, the reality is you can’t impose your own religious standards on those who don’t don’t believe what you believe — especially when it comes to government.

The First Amendment to our Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion. Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion — the freedom not to be forced to adhere to or follow a religious path you haven’t chosen. So when lawmakers use the Bible to justify legislation, it’s a clear crossover of the boundary between church and state. All Americans aren’t Christian, so the laws that govern us should not be guided by that particular religious system of beliefs.

Blake Billings | Dreamstime.com

Memphis Pride Parade

But let’s pause for just one second and pretend this country was governed in a true Christian way. We would not be intolerant, hateful, or speaking ill of those we don’t know. We would welcome immigrants, feed the poor, care for widows, and most importantly, love our neighbors — all of our neighbors.

Unpause: That is not the case. However, we do live in a country that guarantees liberty and justice for all. All means all.

The LGBTQ community matters. Their access to human rights matters. Their safety matters. Their dignity matters. Their lives matter. Because at the end of the day, no matter how one identifies, gender-wise, or who they love, they’re human.

I believe people should stand up for what they believe in, except to the point at which they are just being a bully. As my mom always used to tell me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.”

It’s crucial that people learn to respect even what they don’t understand. Be curious, not judgmental.

And we need legislation to help with that.

There are very few state laws in place that protect the rights of the LGBTQ community, guaranteeing they have the freedoms, access, rights, and privileges of every other Tennessean. Currently, in Tennessee, there are no laws that prohibit housing, private employment, or education discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Neither are there laws to address school bullying or harassment related to students’ sexual orientation and gender identity.

Tennessee doesn’t require public accommodations based on orientation and gender identity, nor does it ban or restrict conversion therapy, the discredited pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The state doesn’t have laws or policies in place that facilitate a gender marker change on driver’s licenses and birth certificates.

Finally, and possibly the most damning of all, is the fact that Tennessee does not ban insurance exclusions for transgender health care or include transgender health care in health benefits to state employees.

During the recent session of the Tennessee General Assembly, GOP legislators introduced a number of anti-LGBTQ bills. The most glaring — HB 1369 or Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act — would have limited the definition of marriage to “natural marriage” between a man and a woman. The regressive measure was an attempt to void the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that requires states to recognize same-sex marriages.

The draft of the bill states that the act was an effort to resist an unlawful federal court order. The bill compares the Obergefell decision to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. These lawmakers had the audacity to compare its intolerant views of gay marriage to Wisconsin’s 1854 rejection of the Slave Act, due to its unconstitutionality. So gay marriage apparently is just as unconstitutional as returning slaves to their masters.

Thankfully, the bill didn’t get too far. Still, if this is where we are in 2019, we have a long way to go before our LGBTQ friends and neighbors feel safe, secure, and welcomed. We have a long way to go before they can know they won’t be denied a basic right because of who they are.

It’s not right. It’s unfair and unconstitutional. And this is a conversation we need to be having all year ’round, not just for one month. Because all human lives matter, this conversation matters.

Maya Smith is a Flyer staff writer.