At a Monday press conference, activists and state Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) criticized a slate of bills set for hearings this week that target the rights of the LGBTQ community, ban books and undermine diversity and inclusion efforts at public colleges and universities.
“My community is exhausted and brokenhearted at being the target of attacks from legislation year after year,” said TaMesha Kaye Prewitt, the transgender service manager of OUTMemphis, an LGBTQ advocacy organization. Prewitt said Monday she has seen firsthand the harm these laws inflict on the community, describing how last year’s law to ban changes to gender on identifying documents like driver’s licenses sparked a long and costly scramble to help members of the trans community with their IDs.
Molly Quinn, executive director of OUTMemphis, said her organization has seen three times as many requests for emergency services like housing and mental health interventions as in previous years. Students are also reporting discrimination in higher numbers.
Quinn also spoke on Senate Bill 2396, which would require clinics receiving state funds that provide gender-affirming care to also offer “de-transitioning procedures” to reverse such care. It also calls on those clinics to report all statistics to the state.
“This gets into state surveillance of gender-affirming care, which translates to state surveillance of transgender people,” said Quinn. “I think anyone who lives in Tennessee could understand what it might feel like for the government to have access to your medical information based on being a minority.”
Meanwhile, bills allowing charter school access to vacant school buildings and lawsuits over books advance
Also on the watch list is a bill to dissolve the Human Rights Commission (which protects the rights of marginalized communities) and transfer it to the attorney general’s office, bills to ban library books over sexual content (explicit, implied or alluded to) and a bill that would recognize common-law marriage only between a man and a woman.
Not all bills appear to be explicitly discriminatory at first. A bill to restrict minors’ access to social media, for example, is on the watch list due to concerns that anti-LGBTQ amendments could be added. And laws similar to Tennessee’s proposed parents’ bill of rights have led to book bans elsewhere.
The roster of bills contributes to Tennessee’s unfortunate distinction as a leader in anti-LGBTQ legislation.
“Tennessee has led the way on every discriminatory trend,” said Molly Whitehorn of the Human Rights Campaign. “It has passed more anti-LGBTQ+ laws than any other state, with more than a dozen passed since 2015.”
“It’s hard to be on the House floor and see people talking about banning Pride flags, but not talk about banning assault weapons, which are killing children across our state and across our country,” said Pearson, who last year was expelled over an anti-gun protest on the House floor.
The first two bills on the watch list will be heard in the House Higher Education Subcommittee Monday at 3 p.m. They are HB1660 and HB1948, which target colleges’ and universities’ ability to create offices for diversity, equity and inclusion.
A full list of bills and the times of their hearings can be found here.
