Not content to merely consider eradicating any mention of homosexuals from their schools, today the Tennessee senate will vote to repeal all LGBT protections offered to Nashville Metro contractors. Republican Senator Mae Beavers (depicted here without makeup in her secret fortress) introduced the bill. Nashville had excluded all church and faith-based organizations from having to hire queers, but Tennessee’s legislators are out to get all us queers and other vulnerable minorities too! Let’s learn more about their hellacious agenda!
According to Jonathan Cole, the Board Chair of Tennessee Equality Project, “What you’re seeing in Tennessee is a shift in power in the legislature. It’s the first time since Reconstruction that the Republicans have held a majority in both houses of legislature—it’s a 2-to-1 majority. And that has changed the tenor of what’s happening. In addition to bills hostile to the LGBT community, you see bills very hostile to other groups as well. There’s a bill designed to allow teachers to teach other “theories” outside of evolution like creationism and intelligent design. There’s a bill that would allow the governor to designate certain organizations as a terrorist organizations, a bill to prohibit any practice of Islam and the following of Sharia law, bills opposed to repeal living wage legislation at the local level, and a lot of anti-union and anti-teacher bills as well.”
The “Special Access to Discriminate Act” as he calls Beavers’ bill hasn’t been scheduled for a vote but it has been sent to the Senate Calendar Committee who will decide when it will come up. There is a smidgen of good news though. The “Don’t Say Gay” bill keeps getting deferred in the Senate. It was originally scheduled to be voted on today but it’s since been deferred. Of course, the Senate legislative session continues until the end of May so it could well pass before the end of the month. But at least the House has already passed on the bill and won’t pick it up again until next January.
patrick
Yeah that bill is pretty hilarious if you consider the arrest of Stacy Hopkins the other day: http://uppityfag.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/tn-high-school-teacher-stacy-hopkins-has-sex-with-her-male-students/
Self-promo but worthy….
Alex
Edit this article! By the time I reached the end of it, I was more focused on the typos and bad grammar than I was on the story.
Cam
Now that people actually call them out on their racism, gays are the only group left that they can publiclly express their bigotry towards and still maintain their jobs.
I have news for these idiot bigots. Imagine if you tried to introduce a bill to take protections away from minorities or women…well that is the same reaction you will get in a not very far off time with regard to bills about gays.
So enjoy this last gasp of your mudhole, ignorant, dirt pit bigotry, because the same regard that people have for the foaming at the mouth racists will be pointed at you soon enough.
TMikel
They are all just vile and despicable. They may DELAY the march of time, but they will not STOP it. Republican Senator Mae Beavers is obviously a tortured and very unhappy person who wants to inflict her personal misery on all and sundry. Well, I never wanted to go to or live in Tennessee anyways.
franklin
We are reaching the point in many of these republican-controlled states that the anti-gay lawmakers have removed all protections against discrimination. The only logical next step is to begin outright prohibition of gay people in hiring, housing, etc., just as they have done with marriage and, in some cases, adoption. Once they run out of anti-gay laws to pass in the current phase, they will have to come up with ever more extreme measures. I predict it will start with a prohibition against gay teachers, something along the lines of DADT.
Stevemd2
The same people who gave us slavery as per the bible and then the kkk and segregation
Give us the hate of gay people
And of course the republican machine hates Obama because their religious base is the same old south.
Whose worst nightmare has come true.
You can put out the fires of hatred but the gasonline lies on the ground just waiting for the next repub / tea party people to throw a match
sanluvsgod
GAY PRIDE AS A SIGN OF THE END HOLY GOD WILL BRING JUDGMENT DAY MAY 21 2011
Cam
@sanluvsgod:
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love the idiots tha actually give a DATE for the end of the world….because it’s so funny to watch them all cringe in bewilderment when the world DOESN’T end. LOL!!!!!
Hey Sanluvsgod….guess, what, when the world DOESN’T end on May 21st, it must mean that God LOVES gay rights and that is why he spared the world…right? Fair is fair, if your claim is that he was going to destroy it BECAUSE of gays, then if it is spared it must be because God likes “The Gays”.
So deal with that.
Ruhlmann
@sanluvsgod: Will it be formal, or casual? I need to know.