Will the damned Old South ever give up yearning for the 19th Century?
State Rep. Dan Howell ® has pushed the legislation in response to a change in the American Counseling Association’s ethics code that tells counselors not to refer clients “based solely on the counselor’s personally held values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.”
Hey, Cletus, your legislation may allow those counselors to deny service. Your legislation, however, will not prevent the ACA from pulling said counselors’ accreditation.
Those with deeply held homophobic, racists, or misogynistic feelings, please seek help.
Signed, The Rest of 21st Century America
These people can’t help themselves. Well, I say we make them feel it in the pocket until they understand that the country isn’t going back.
What gets me is that the very arguments that they continuously make about LGBT people mirror or are identical to the same arguments that these people’s ancestors made about Blacks during Segregation. We’ve kind of forgotten how often they used religious freedom to perpetuate anti-Black legislation and sentiment.
I have always expected to be ashamed to call myself a Tennessean about once a month. These past couple months have me wondering whether I should ratchet that expectation upward.
At least Tennessee is a target rich environment when it comes to backlash and boycotts, unlike Mississippi.
They say you can’t legislate morality, but you can legislate hate.
The Civil War 2.0. Dinosaurs do die, but they die slowly.
I agree, when I retired I made the mistake moving to East TN so that I would be closer to my kids… Now being on a fixed income it will take many many years before I have the resources to leave. Until then I cringe every time the Legislature is in session knowing that these wackadoodles (trying to be kind here) will find another way to showcase their bigotry.
I’m in the market for a new car having recently blown an engine, you can be sure I will not be purchasing any time soon from a local dealer and/or a model manufactured in TN.
Tennessee Legislature Advances 2 Bills Targeting LGBT Individuals
Come on folks in Nashville we can’t let NC, SC, GA, MS, AL and all those other friendly rival states get ahead of us, after all we are the “Don’t Say Gay” state…
The state House education committee also passed
a bill on Wednesday that would require students to use the bathroom
that aligns with their sex at birth, reviving legislation that the
committee tabled a month ago due to concern from some Republicans.
…
I seem to remember way back in the dusty recesses of my mental hard drive that one of the prime beliefs the GOP had was an ardent desire to make government smaller and less intrusive in our daily lives. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe that applied to businesses and their tax problems and the wealthy who were in dire need of a tax break during the Great Recession and not ordinary people going about their lives. Now the GOP is in the business of being the bathroom police??
I think I need to go be ill now.
Did the alleged legislators make special provisions for the restrooms & movie cubicles in all the adult bookstores across Tennessee?
PS-If the two in the photo are any indication, the Tennessee legislators aren’t missing any meals or snacks as they legislate…
You already can’t force people to perform personal services, so what this does is set up a situation where if someone pretending to be a counselor takes your money and then says “I can’t do anything for you because you’re gay”, you don’t get to ask for a refund. And yeah, as usual, first court that touches this will swat it down, but that’s pointless trouble.
Can we just start burning these fuckers at the stake, please?
The thing is that anti-LGBT legislation polls really well outside of the bigger cities and this riles up the rubes so they don’t notice cuts to Medicare and Medicaid or other services that they actually need.
“Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam ® has expressed concern over the bill and whether it could cost the state education funding from the federal government. He’s argued that schools should decide their bathroom policies.”
Boy oh Boy R Dee…these guys are ALL for small “g” government, local control and decision making. Except when they’re not.
Mr Smirk will continue to say he opposes even as he signs the bill.