Bill to let officiants refuse gay marriages goes to governor as LGBTQ advocates rally
Hours after a bill allowing marriage officiants to decline to solemnize weddings if they have moral objections received final passage from lawmakers, a vibrant crowd rallied on Capitol Hill advocating against a slate of bills aimed at placing new restrictions on Tennessee’s LGBTQ community.
Senate Bill 596, which would allow officiants to decline to perform weddings, passed the Tennessee Senate without debate along party lines on Monday evening. The bill passed the House last year, and will head to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.
“Already in this session, we have an anti-LGBT bill headed to the governor’s desk,” Tennessee Equality Project Director Chris Sanders told reporters Tuesday morning.
Sen. Mark Pody, R-Lebanon, who sponsored the bill, told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this month that the goal of his bill is to provide clarity on whether officiants are required to perform marriages.
“A lot of times these bills are introduced to intentionally and directly attack certain groups,” Sen. London Lamar, D-Memphis, said before voting against the bill. “Let’s just try not to have legislation to single out groups. We’re better than that as a legislature.”
Molly Whitehorn, an organizer with the Human Rights Campaign, called the bill “the latest example of overreach” by the legislature.
“Let’s be clear — this bill is intended to exclude LGBTQ+ folks from equal protection under the law,” Whitehorn said. “Marriage equality was settled by the Supreme Court in 2015, reaffirmed by a bipartisan majority in Congress in 2022, and there is overwhelming support nationally for same-sex marriage. All Tennesseans have a right to marry the person they love regardless of gender and should not be turned away by a government employee based upon that employee’s personal beliefs.”
A group brought together by TEP rallied at the Cordell Hull Legislative Office
Building on Tuesday to call attention to a list of bills which they describe as antagonistic to the LGBTQ community, including a bill that would permit lawsuits against adults who help children travel out of state to receive gender-affirming medical or surgical care, and another bill requiring schools to notify parents if a student requests accommodations to affirm their gender identity.
TEP Nashville Committee Chair Dahron
Johnson, who earlier this month became the first transgender person in state history to offer a prayer on the floor of the House of Representatives, said the group came to Capitol Hill “to hold folks accountable.
“When we come down to this space though, we come to speak to our lived realities — and we’re told to quiet down,” Johnson said. “We’re told to get out of that balcony, to put away our signs.”
Among the bills opposed by the group is a controversial measure by Rep. Gino Bulso, R-Brentwood, which seeks to prohibit display of ideological flags in public schools.
“When we try to simply signal safe space for those afraid or hurting by waving a small flag of safety, they seek to silence such speech,” Johnson said.
Stephanie Mahnke, executive director of the Tennessee Pride Chamber, on Monday asked lawmakers to consider the direct impact of their bills on LGBTQ owned and allied businesses across the state, adding that the chamber has heard from “countless business and tourism groups,” considering or rethinking investments in the state.
“Whenever LGBTQ people are excluded from participation in their schools and in their workplaces, when their mere existence is erased or criminalized, we have seen — we know — that this also impacts workforce retention, recruitment activity, as well as our students,” Mahnke said.
Bills opposed by the Tennessee Equality Project include:
SB1722/HB1605, would prohibit publicly-funded schools from displaying certain political flags.
SB2780/HB1995, which would require the Tennessee Department of Health to create a separate marriage license application form and license to be used for heterosexual marriage applicants only, and prohibit county clerks from certifying marriages between “persons other than a female bride and a male groom.”
SB2781/HB1949, which would expand the offense of “observation without consent” to include entities with policies that allow restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, showers designed for single-sex use.
SB2782/HB2310, which would create legal grounds to sue anyone who “knowingly removes a minor from this state” without parental consent “for the purpose of assisting the minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex or treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
SB1738/HB2169, which would prohibit the Department of Children’s Services from requiring adoptive and foster parents to support policies on sexual orientation or gender identity that conflicts with the parent’s religious or moral beliefs.
SB1810/HB2165 which would require schools to notify parents of any student’s request for accommodation to affirm the student’s gender identity.
Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her at vjones@tennessean.com .