A look back on a year in the politics of equality in Tennessee: Photos from around the state

It's not over yet, but 2013 has been an incredible year in forward movement for equality in Tennessee.  We fought hard and even got some results.  Check out a few of the highlights.

Advancing Equality Day on the Hill brought advocates from East, West, and Middle TN to the Capitol to attempt to stop negative bills like Don't Say Gay and advance positive legislation like the Dignity for All Students Act.  Here we are preparing for a press conference in Legislative Plaza.

On July 22 the Knox County Commission passed an inclusive non-discrimination ordinance for Knox County employees.  Pictured are bill sponsor Commissioner Amy Broyles and supporters in Knoxville in Commission chambers after the victory.

When Rep. John Ragan, House sponsor of the Don't Say Gay bill received an award from Students First, 11-year-old Marcel Neergaard called foul.  As a student who has endured bullying for being gay, Marcel received national attention when he called on Students First to rescind the award, which they did.  Yes, a student really can teach the public about what's going on in our Legislature!  Marcel continues to inspire us all at TEP.  

In order to show the reality of discrimination, couples in Nashville and a couple in Wilson County...

as well as couples in Shelby County applied for marriage licenses.

 

 

 

 

Knoxville, Memphis, Cookeville, West TN, Chattanooga, and Nashville held rallies at the end of August to celebrate TN Marriage Equality Day to counter the Legislature's Traditional Marriage Day.  I think we had a better turnout than they did.

 

 

In September the push began for inclusive non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies in Rutherford County Schools after a teacher was told to take down a safe schools poster.  The fight continues today with advocates developing strategy to advance their proposal in the School Board. 

 

At Olympus TEP honored 8 Champions of Equality--7 from state media outlets and 1 Memphis City Councilman--for their work in advancing equality in Tennessee.  Nothing we do is possible without our allies!

The Memphis community gathered in October to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the non-discrimination ordinance.

Also in October attorney Abby Rubenfeld, other Tennessee attorneys, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed suit to have the marriage of couples who moved to Tennessee legally recognized.  TEP identified 2 of the 4 plaintiff couples.

Collegedale detective Kat Cooper (center) led her city to be the first in TN to offer partner benefits.  Knoxville soon followed by executive order of Mayor Madeline Rogero.  In November Chattanooga Councilman Chris Anderson passed his partner benefits and non-discrimination ordinance making it the third city in Tennessee to offer such benefits.  Also pictured is Kat's TEP Hamilton & Bradley Counties Committee co-chair Marcus Ellsworth (viewer's left) and TEP executive director Chris Sanders.

A look at the numbers on the first day of early voting in Nashville

According to the list I received from the Davidson County Election Commission, 469 people voted on Friday. It looks as if there may be one duplicate on the list, so maybe it was 468. I don't have the statistics from the first day four years ago, but the number was higher than I expected.

Republican Surge?: Judging from the campaign signs posted at the Election Commission, a crowded 5th district Republican congressional primary and the three-man horse race for the Republican nomination for governor must account for the numbers. About 45% of those voting on the first day pulled a Republican primary ballot. It should be noted that Friday's Jackson Day celebration may have kept many Democrats from voting after work.

GLBT Factor: Just over 2% of those voting on Friday are part of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community. (The number could be higher. I don't know every GLBT person in Nashville, folks!) After voting (or before voting for those who were heading to the Election Commission on Saturday), the TEP Nashville Committee held our Vote + Happy Hour event at 3rd and Lindsley. You can find some of the pictures here.

Rutherford County Contrast: Despite being higher than I expected, the Nashville numbers are still low. Rutherford County provides a contrast where 1001 people voted on the first day, according to the Daily News Journal. But they had six locations and Davidson County only had one. 698 voted in the Republican primary in the Rutherford County with only 286 in the Democratic. Again, I think we can attribute those numbers to a crowded Republican field in the 6th district congressional race as well as the governor's race.

Voting on Saturday: Maybe the second day totals will be stronger in Nashville, despite the rather limited Saturday hours. One indication was the large crowd of volunteers for Jeff Yarbro's district 21 State Senate campaign who were gathered at the Election Commission Saturday morning to vote and then canvass neighborhoods. Stay tuned for more updates as the numbers come in over the next few days.

Bart Gordon blinded him with science

The first part of a two-part interview with Congressman Bart Gordon in today's Daily News Journal discusses the 6th District Democrat's commitment to MTSU and Science education and his assessment of the Obama campaign in Tennessee.

He is refreshingly candid about his skirmish with UT's president over funding for a science building at MTSU:

Q: As you mentioned, you're a graduate of MTSU, a huge Blue Raiders fan. When UT President John Petersen was lobbying against MTSU's science building funding, did you sort of threaten to cut off some federal funding for UT?

Gordon: I didn't sort of. It was very explicit, and it wasn't so much the parochialism of it, it's just he was doing the wrong thing. MTSU had played by the rules. The science building, which is going to be very important to the school, had gone through all the process and become the No. 1 priority and he was trying to undercut that, and I made it very clear to him. Unfortunately, I had to do it twice, but he apologized and said he would back off, and I think they've done that now. Now we've got to go through the process and get this funding.

On his support of the Obama campaign:

Q: On a different subject, are you endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president and will you be campaigning for him actively?

Gordon: I will be supporting Sen. Obama. The fact of the matter is their campaign has made it clear that Tennessee is not targeted, and so they don't expect to win Tennessee, and I don't expect that there's going to be much activity in Tennessee in the presidential race.

Conservative is the word in Rutherford County

Just about everyone running for Legislature in Rutherford County is trying to claim the conservative mantle. That's what the quotations from the Daily News Journal would indicate. The paper talked to several of them at a candidate forum at the Rockvale Community Center on Monday.

Joe Carr, a Republican running for House District 48, is fiscally conservative and the same goes on moral issues. But he also wants term limits. "We need term limits in the Legislature," he said. "Almost 90 percent of incumbents out there keep getting re-elected because they use their money and power at the Legislature to help with their campaigns." Never mind that the voters picked them.

Jon Jaques, one of his primary opponents, thinks there's something to the fact that the "budget has grown four times faster than personal income." Even if that's true, I'm not sure what the connection is. In terms of immigration, "The problem is that we don't know who the people in our county are," he pointed out. I'd never thought of it that way...just like the budget analogy.

If Democrat Rick Parks is a conservative, the paper didn't note it. His wife, Lisa, was at the event, since Mr. Parks was working at the Fire Department at the time. She said her husband understands the needs of working families and knows what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck. Moreover, she said Rutherford County is a place Rick Parks is "proud to call home." Not much to argue with there.

Democrat Tim Tipps believes a power higher than the Speaker will be of help if he gets elected: his faith in God will help guide him to the House. But he also talked about the budget that was on everyone's mind, "We've got to deal with the economy and be fiscally conservative," Tipps said.

Republican Lou Ann Zelenik is running against the Governor. She criticized money being spent on the governor's mansion, "including an underground party room which is not a necessity," while "MTSU needs a new science building." No one asked whether she'd support a science wing of the Governor's mansion and an underground party room at MTSU. Someone ought to poll the students on that. I'll give her credit, though. Of all the Republicans running against the Governor from whom I've seen comment, she actually picks a vulnerable point of attack.

Profile of Dee Butler: Environmental Protest Candidate

The Tennessee Tribune includes an extensive profile of Dee Butler, Democratic candidate for State Senate District 16.

I believe in a greener tomorrow. I support the early education of our
students and community in the need to rethink the way we interact with
our environment, including increased community awareness of
the need to reduce, recycle, and reuse resources in our homes and
workplaces.

She says her candidacy was prompted by the discovery of a high levels of toxic materials in the soil and water causing a public health threat. She found a lack of concern from Senator Jim Tracy, whom she hopes to face in November.

The piece goes on to cite the wide gap that traditionally separates environmental activism and racial minorities and the propensity of poor and minority communities to be victims of polluters.
Dee Butler faces Jean Anne Rogers of Murfreesboro in the Democratic primary.

Hey, let's run a press release!

If you want news about state legislative races, you have to dig hard. So if anything appears, I usually have to blink my eyes a couple of times to make sure it's real. Once I get over my shock and gratitude, I am quickly brought back down to earth when I realize that what usually gets written doesn't amount to coverage. Such is the case of the Daily News Journal's profile of Tim Tipps. This is no slight to Mr. Tipps. Good for him for getting word out about his campaign. That's his job. And let me tell you, he and his campaign got it done with this release. It ran in the Sunday edition complete with an active link to his site and an email address.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that very few candidates for Legislature have websites or websites that are easy to find or websites that have good contact information on them? Oh, and if you sign up for email updates from the candidates, don't hold your breath waiting for them. I think I've received one campaign email in the month of June out of the dozen sites where I signed up for "news."

But back to Tim Tipps. In reading the profile at the Daily News Journal, you'd never know his political party. He's a Democrat, by the way. You also wouldn't know that he faces Rick Parks in the primary. And whoever wins in the primary will face Joe Carr, Jon Jaques, or Lou Ann Zelenik. The 48th District might be one of the hottest to watch in the state.

Let me repeat. This is not the problem of Tim Tipps. If anything, he should be praised for getting information out and making his site so accessible. Let's hope we see some coverage as the race heats up.

Uncivil war in Rutherford County

Executive Editor Jimmy Hart of the Daily News Journal (Murfreesboro) comments about the exciting level of civic involvement in the failed campaign to bring Bible Park USA to Rutherford County, but he also describes the uncivil nature of the debate.

But it seemed a "win at all cost" mentality developed among small, yet vocal factions of both groups, and what resulted was an atmosphere unbecoming a great Southern community in the buckle of the Bible Belt.

It's hard to do what Hart commends. I was rereading Robert's Rules this weekend to prepare for TEP's annual meeting, and I was struck by the number of safeguards there are in the rules to maintain not only order but civility. The rules, in other words, assume that the members of deliberative bodies would eat one another alive, left to their own devices.

Hart (and Robert, for that matter) would like us to debate the issues rather than the motives and character of those presenting the issues. But it seems difficult to do so in light of 19th and 20th century developments in high and low culture. Whether we are Marxists or not (are there any left?), we live in the wake of Marx's "false consciousness" thesis and Freud's discussion of repression and the role of the unconscious (sometimes capitalized). Feminist theory argues that "the personal is the political." Americans have also seen the rise of personal religious confessionalism in politics that makes public debate tricky. On the low side, we have the constant tabloid focus on the personal lives of politicians and endless stories about anything other than the issues themselves. Taken together, all of these developments shape citizens with a mixture of healthy skepticism and unhealthy suspicion.

We're unlikely to undo the intellectual and cultural forces of the last two centuries. They emerged with modern democracy. But calling people to a different kind of debate that brackets personalities is a good check on the worst tendencies of contemporary political discussion. There is increasing discussion of the "moderation" of comments in online forums. I doubt that the medium will allow those checks to be successful, but it's an experiment that's worth trying and so is the attempt to hold a civil public meeting on a contentious issue.

Bible Park's latest roller coaster, WWJD?--the jokes are just too obvious

It's really hard to know where to begin with this story in today's Tennessean about Bible Park USA. I'm trying to contain the sarcasm, but I think I've already failed. An Israeli former Penthouse photographer is a major force in the company that is trying to launch the theme park with scenes from the Bible.

It's just the latest public disaster for the project, which has already failed a close zoning vote. The developers have had to walk carefully through the Church-state minefield on the bond issue as well. And now this?

Here's what the county mayor had to say, "I am not going to judge what any person did 35 years ago that might not be appropriate," Burgess said. "It isn't illegal, but it was not anything I would have participated in."

The Mayor's in a tough spot, no doubt. He might have acknowledged the appearance of hypocrisy, but then that would have become the headline, of course.

So far, lots of sin. I can't wait to see where the redemption comes from on this one.

County Commission members need more info on Bible Park

Many members of the Rutherford County Commission say that they don't yet know enough about the proposed Bible Park USA to announce their votes at the upcoming meeting next month. About a third are either opposed or leaning against it. The developers have not finished their proposal on tax breaks and other details. Earlier this month, the Regional Planning Commission voted 8-7 against the park's rezoning proposal.

Objectively, it looks pretty bad for the park. But why does something tell me the developers have a miracle in their pocket and will end up getting the deal? Stay tuned.

Close vote in Rutherford Co on Bible Park

In an 8-7 vote, the Rutherford County Planning Commission rejected a zoning change that would pave the way for a proposed Bible Park. http://www.dnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080415/NEWS01/804150322/1002

The proposal will still go before the Rutherford County Commission in one month. I've heard a rumor that the City of Murfreesboro may try to annex more land if the County doesn't approve the move.

No word yet on the Attorney General's opinion that Rep. Donna Rowland (R-Murfreesboro) has requested.