Tennessee has been in the news a lot lately, it seems.  And as much as I love my home state, I’m less than thrilled.  None of the LGBT stories coming out of Tennessee have been the least bit positive.  We’ve had a gay teen suicide, a father (as well as a pastor)  inciting other church members to assault his son and son’s boyfriend when they tried to attend church, and now this.  Bo Watson, a Republican senator of an unincorporated area just outside Chattanooga, and Richard Floyd, a congressman from Chattanooga, submitted a bill before the state legislature that would have required transgender Tennesseans to use the bathroom designated by the gender on their birth certificates.  No big deal, right?  Most trans* people simply change the specified gender on their birth certificates anyway.  Wrong.  Tennessee law prohibits this.  Even if a person holds a Tennessee driver’s license, US passport, and any other official document stating one gender, if that’s not the sex of their birth certificate, it doesn’t matter in the eyes of the state.  

How would they enforce this, you say?   I’m assuming it would be bathroom monitors, just like elementary school.  But in all seriousness, I have yet to see hw this would be implemented.  It may be up to someone else to report it to some authority figure, and they in turn would alert the police.  Yes, police, because any infraction would result in a $50 fine.  Absolutely ridiculous.  

Another thing to note: the way this bill is written would actually allow it to be applied to children taken into the bathroom of a responsible parent.  Say a little girl needs to go potty and her dad takes her to the men’s room.  Sirens sound, a gate slams down in front of the entrance, and a ticket prints out of the paper towel dispenser.  I can’t imagine anyone actually trying to do that, but they could.  That’s how broadly written the language is.  

On a positive note, Senator Watson withdrew his support from the bill, effectively quashing it for now without sponsorship in the Senate.  And no one from any of the other major Tennessee cities, (Memphis, Nashville, or Knoxville) have stepped in to replace him.  Watson says that there are more important things to worry about in our state right now.  He’s right.  Representative Floyd on the other hand said:

 “I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry… Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk.  We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts. Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let them him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room.” 

It is reassuring that most of the perpetrators of these acts of hatred seem to be at least septuagenarians, but it stains the view of our state in the eyes of the rest of the nation and the world.  The link in the title takes you to a brief article about this, but there’s also a poll on that page.  As of this writing, 88% of people think the proposed law is ridiculous; this is also encouraging.  Feel free to tell them, or me, what you think about this.