AG calls trans bill threat to schools
Federal gov’t could pull funding
NASHVILLE — The state attorney general says passage of the transgender restroom bill pending in the state legislature would put Tennessee’s public K-12 schools and state colleges and universities at risk of losing their federal funding.
That’s because the U.S. Department of Education interprets the anti-discrimination provisions of federal education law to require that transgender students be given access to restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity instead of their sex assigned at birth, Attorney General Herbert Slatery said in an advisory opinion released Monday.
House Bill 2414, which is awaiting further review in the House and Senate finance committees,
would require transgender students to use the restrooms and locker rooms of the gender on their birth certificates.
Meanwhile, the state Senate gave final legislative approval Monday night to another bill strongly opposed by the LGBT community: House Bill 1840, which allows private-practice counselors to refuse mental health services to people if it conflicts with their “sincerely held principles.” That bill now goes to Gov. Bill Haslam, who can sign it into law, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature.
Slatery’s opinion was publicly released soon after a national anti-discrimination group held a news conference in Nashville to oppose both the restroom and counseling bills.
Both bills — and especially the restroom bill — are backed by the conservative Family Action Council of Tennessee, or FACT.
Songwriter and producer Desmond Child and actor Chris Carmack, who plays a gay aspiring country music singer in the television show “Nashville,” joined others at the news conference in speaking out against the bills, which they say discriminate against gay and transgender people. The event was hosted by GLAAD, a national organization formerly known as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and the Tennessee Equality Project.
The groups are also encouraging Tennessee’s country music industry to come out against the bills.
Carmack, who lives in Nashville, called the bills “unnecessary discrimination” and said the “human damage they can cause can never be recovered.”
He spoke after Henry Seaton, an 18-year-old transgender senior at Beech High School Hendersonville, said the bathroom bill creates an environment for bullying by requiring students like him to face more bullying. “I am not a threat to anyone,” he said.
Child, who has written dozens of hit songs — including “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” was more forceful in his criticism of the bill.
“These shocking and terrible bills are dangerous and reckless right-wing attacks. These bills are morally and spiritually corrupt to the core,” said Child, who lives in Nashville with his husband, Curtis Shaw, and their twin sons.
Child said the bills were filed this year “because it’s payback time for the Supreme Court making same-sex marriage the law of the land.”
Last week, entertainers Miley Cyrus, Emmylou Harris, Ty Herndon and Chely Wright issued statements against the bills.
Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD president and CEO, said her group hopes to enlist more of Tennessee’s entertainment industry to speak out against the bills before they become law, as the television and movie industry has against similar bills in Georgia and North Carolina. Last week, rock star Bruce Springsteen canceled a scheduled concert in North Carolina in protest of a similar bill there.
But state Sen. Mike Bell, R-Athens, who is sponsoring the transgender restroom bill in the Senate, said Monday that such actions here wouldn’t sway him.
“God help this state if we’re going to decide what legislation we pass on what rock stars do or what corporations think about us or think about our legislation. If we are going to decide what is right and wrong by what an ’80s rock star thinks, then God help this state,” he said.
Bell also said he doubts that threats of conventions and large meetings potentially being moved out of Tennessee would materialize. “I seriously doubt that would happen. I think that’s been a threat that’s been used before in previous legislation and they’ve not followed through with it. I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.”