gay bashing back on the Nashville council agenda

The Nashville Scene has the most in-depth coverage of Nashville news, so much more so than the daily papers. This time, Jeff Woods examines if Nashville is finally ready for even the smallest of legal professional protections for gay and lesbian citizens.

The folks I see when I go home all seem to be intelligent, reasonable people. These must be the only reasonable individuals of the 625,000 people in the city limits (MSA: 1.5 million). Fire, brimstone, ignorance and prejudice appear to still be the primary crops of Middle Tennessee.

You know, after pot.

From the article:

"As a representative of Metro government, I think it's an embarrassment that we don't already have this law to protect employees," says Megan Barry, the bill's sponsor, who was elected to an at-large council seat in 2007. "This is not cutting edge stuff. These protections have become, if anything, common and mainstream."

Yet in 2003, when then Metro Council member Chris Ferrell introduced a similar bill, Nashville went berserk. (Ferrell is now CEO of SouthComm, which owns the Nashville Scene.) Psychotic preachers staged protests outside the courthouse, decrying this "ploy to place government approval upon the monstrous sins of Hell-bound sodomites." Good times. The bill was defeated at a torturous council meeting, with the vice mayor at the time—the star-crossed Howard Gentry—casting the dramatic tie-breaking vote.

"It was ugly," says Gentry, who still agonizes over his dilemma. "That was probably one of the low points in our city's history."

What happened that night at the courthouse was shameful to many people. The venom from the anti-gay opposition was a little too reminiscent of ugly scenes from the civil rights era. It raised a bothersome question: Are we a city of bigots?

[snip]

"I don't know why this wouldn't pass," she says matter-of-factly, as if she were discussing a resolution that honors puppies. "I don't know why everyone wouldn't stand firm on this one."

To be sure, evangelicals are pitching fits this time too. The Tennessee chapters of the Rev. James Dobson's Family Action Council and Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum are orchestrating an email campaign to bombard the council with glimpses of the horrors to come. A sample: The ordinance would force people to use courthouse rest rooms in the company of cross dressers, and it would require the city to pay for sex-change operations.

"It's unfortunate, but there's a segment of the population that hates us more than taxes," says Chris Sanders of GLBT advocacy group the Tennessee Equality Project. "This is just about hiring, firing and promotion, but according to our opponents, the apocalypse is going to turn on what Metro Council does."

That's no exaggeration of the evangelical point of view. In a call-to-arms email only last week, the Family Action Council of Tennessee warned, "This is a very dangerous path for the city to take."

"Let me be clear," wrote David Shelley, FACT's director of church and community relations, "Family Action of Tennessee does not 'hate homosexuals.' Our opposition to this bill is out of love and compassion for the homosexual community as well as the rest of Nashville. It is not 'loving' for government to approve of or protect a sexual lifestyle that is clearly unhealthy and a perversion of God's natural design for intimacy, marriage and procreation (Genesis 1, 19, Leviticus 18, 20, Romans 1, I Corinthians 6, I Timothy 1, etc.).

"While it may be 'politically correct' to adopt this type of ordinance in our modern culture," Shelley continued, "no civilization in human history has survived after legally approving of same-sex marriage." Actually, the pending ordinance has nothing to do with legalizing same-sex marriage. But let's not bog down in details.

I like to think the best of my Tennessee Volunteers, but I have a lifetime of empirical evidence to suggest I should not expect it.