A Tale of Two Tennessee's

It hasn’t been so long that I’ve forgotten how “gay marriage” was the weapon of fear used by the GOP to get themselves elected; they spread the fear that, by allowing homosexuals to marry, traditional marriages would be ruined or destroyed … though no one ever said how this might happen. They even attempted to spin the lie that if you allowed a same-sex couple to marry, then you’d have to allow men marrying children, dogs, their cars because, well, fear.

But look around, it’s been six years since marriage equality came to be and I haven’t seen one heterosexual marriage dissolve because I married Carlos, and I haven’t been asked to the wedding or man and machine, woman and animal, or even children. It was all fear and lies, spread by the GOP.

So, because they can’t use that any longer what will they do? Attack the trans community; the new “them”. It started with the bathroom bills of a few years ago when the GOP told us that men will dress as women so they can go into a woman’s restroom and sexually harass or even rape women, even though there has not been a single case of this happened.

Sidenote: men have been raping women since time began and never needed to slip on a dress and use the ladies’ room to do it.

And now, in Tennessee, because, well, Tennessee, a veritable hot bed of ignorant backwards thinking politicians, both chambers of the state Legislature have passed a bill that would require businesses to post notices that say they allow transgender people to use the building’s restrooms.

The bathroom bill is back, y’all, only now they want to punish a business that accepts everyone; you know, this way the bigots can go somewhere else to shop or eat or browse. And if signed, this bill—which would require signs at the entrances to the building and the door of every restroom that isn’t single stalled—would make Tennessee the first state in the country to adopt legislation seeking to single out trans-affirming businesses for allowing trans people to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

How proud Tennesseans must be.

The bill’s sponsor, state Representative and Republican, because, of course, Tim Rudd seriously believes his bill isn’t aimed at transgender people since it doesn’t ban them from using the restroom altogether, though it might make businesses refuse restrooms to trans people. Instead, he says it’s aimed at “the protection of women and children against sexual predators that could be taking advantage of policies, executive orders or legislation that may allow the opposite sex to enter a restroom, shower or locker that allows more than one person in the facility at a time.”

Oh, we’re back to rapists putting on dresses. How backwards of Tennessee.

This is the same state that tried to pass a Don’t Say Gay Bill …

… the same state where another Republican, Jason Zachary, introduced a bill to allow cisgender students to sue the school if they’re not given a “reasonable accommodation” if they don’t want to share facilities with trans people …

… the same state where another bill that passed the legislature bans books that mention LGBTQ+ people from public schools …

… … the same state where another bill seeks to make the Bible the official state book …

… the same state where another bill, currently on the governor’s desk, and he has until May 3 to act on the bill or allow it to become law, requires schools to notify parents if sexual orientation or gender identity are going to be mentioned in class 30 days in advance, and gives parents the ability to opt their children out so that they don’t have to hear that LGBTQ people exist.

Tennessee, where the state motto is “Agriculture and Commerce” but should be “Fear and Ignorance”.

LGBTQ Nation

But then, this also happened in Tennessee … Dalton Stevens, a senior at Franklin High School, wanted to make a statement for his senior year prom, so he decided on bold formal attire. His boyfriend, Jacob Geittman, says:

“He did his big ‘prom-posal’ and asked me to prom, and he decided he was going to wear a dress, and I’m like, ‘Okay! You’re going to look good in it!'”

Dalton chose a floor-length red dress:

“I very much view clothes as genderless. I was very confident. I knew that I felt beautiful, and I felt great.”

But prom night, while Stevens and Geittman were at the Harpeth Hotel in downtown Franklin taking pictures, a man later identified as homophobic moron Sam Johnson, CEO of a local telemedicine company, VisuWell, decided that, as a grown-assed man, it was his job to ridicule Dalton Stevens for his attire. Dalton tells it like this:

“Slander terms thrown towards me of like ‘You look bad,’ ‘You’ve got hair on your chest, you shouldn’t be wearing a dress,’ ‘You’re not a man,’ blah, blah, blah. The fact that he thought he had the audacity to come tell me what I was supposed to wear and what I was supposed to do because of his standards.”

Or his insecurities.

Or his jealousy that he couldn’t take a boyfriend to the prom?

When the video of Johnson stalking and verbally assaulting Dalton Stevens went viral, Johnson’s employer, VisuWell, fired him, and released a statement:

“We share the concerns that so many have expressed on this matter and look forward to announcing concrete steps we are taking in support of the LGBTQ community in particular over the coming weeks.”

Here’s the deal: what does it hurt? Who does it hurt? It’s clothing, and it made Dalton Stevens feel good, until Sam Johnson, whose masculinity was threatened, came along.

And now he’s out of a job, and Dalton went to the prom and had a fabulous time.

Good.

Joe My God