My adopted home state of Tennessee has made itself a new front in the ongoing struggle for civil, human rights. Historically, like the weather that passes through, it’s been a home to many crosswinds. Slavery was legal in Tennessee. In the era of the Civil War, east Tennessee was significantly anti-slavery and pro-Union, and Tennessee was one of the first states to be reincorporated into the Union. Yet Tennessee was also the birthplace of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Perhaps more than any other Southern city, it housed the center of the 1960s’ Civil Rights movement. Its legislature provided the final vote to affirm the 19th amendment for women’s suffrage. Today, those multifaceted crosscurrents continue, involving gender, race, and sexual orientation.
The two largest urban centers in Tennessee (Memphis and Nashville) vote Democratic while the rest of the state – which comprises the majority – votes Republican. These two urban centers are also the most racially and ethnically diverse places in Tennessee. Current political fault lines are drawn accordingly. The religious diversity follows similar trends, and the Bible Belt’s influence can easily be seen rurally while driving on Tennessee’s interstate highways.
In a move hostile to the black and LGBTQ+ communities, Governor Bill Lee has recently refused federal funding to prevent and treat HIV – a move tantamount to refusing lifesaving healthcare to thousands of needy individuals. It’s no coincidence that these individuals, mostly people with brown skin and gay men, are his political opponents. This angle makes the moral calculus of these maneuvers troublesome. It resembles Nazi Germany’s concentration camps or Stalinist Russia’s pograms more than the light of modern American liberty.
Lee has attempted to target state HIV relief to mothers and children, frontline healthcare workers, and those involved in sex trafficking. That’s nice, but these groups do not suffer immensely from HIV! Through “willful ignorance,” his plan targets a “fictious epidemic” in the words of Greg Millett of amFAR according to NBC News. George HW Bush supported AIDS relief, so did his son George W Bush through a heroic PEPFAR program to relieve its harsh impact in Africa. Even Donald Trump raised funding to end this longstanding epidemic. This should not be politically controversial!
Further, he has outlawed crossdressing in “drag” while in the presence of children. A photo of the governor crossdressing in high school has surfaced and led to widespread jokes on the comedy circuit. Lee says that he is concerned about only the sexual influence on children, but he does not share moral outrage when seeing people in bikinis at the beach or dressing young girls in pageant shows. I’m not sure this will pass First Amendment or Equal Protection muster in the courts.
These actions clearly seek to “other” populations. The governor and the state Republican party seek to use homophobia to garner votes because they have no better positive vision for the state. They go against the Christian religion, which I, too, profess and upon which Lee relies for votes. In its Scriptures, this religion promotes life, eschews unnecessary killing, promotes healing, and gives favor to marginalized groups. But do Christians really care about their supposed belief in love of neighbor when they look, act, and vote different than us?
Others might say that homosexuality and sex outside of marriage are frowned upon by the Bible. The interpretation of these themes is debatable and minor relative to the aforementioned overarching themes. Trying to encode them in state law shows a lack of theological confidence that God will judge us all at the end of time. Matters that should be dealt with in the liberty of conscience now oppress others with the hammer of state law. (This always seems to be the fate of White Christian Nationalism.)
Personally, I’m a married heterosexual. I have friends who appreciate drag, but I frankly don’t enjoy my experiences around people dressing in drag. I don’t see it as harmful, though, and think people should have the right to dress in this way as free expression. My personal discomfort should be neglected in favor of First Amendment expressions. Thus is the trajectory of the Bill of Rights, and so it should be with my state.
Although the attempt to make humor of the drag situation is clearly at play, it worries me that more outrage has not been expressed about depriving people of lifesaving healthcare. This potentially impacts hundreds of lives. An estimated 500 people per year will get HIV because of the lack of funding. A handful each year will likely die because of this move. This aspect is less humorous than drag; frankly, it’s sickening. How is this “promoting the general welfare?”
I feel the same kind of profound, abiding anger about the HIV-related decision as I felt with the murder of George Floyd. Depriving people of life because you have some private issue with their bedroom behaviors or skin color is simply inhumane. Its inhospitality goes against the Christian religion and an American belief in individual liberty. It deserves widespread condemnation.
Tennessee does not need to spawn another KKK movement to silence the minority’s human rights. Christians like me need to live out of our ideals – Lee’s professed ethic. Over-protecting our children from the world’s rich diversity is neither Biblical nor Constitutional but rather fearful. These politicians fan the flames of prejudice for votes instead of appealing to “the better angels of our nature.” Responsible self-government and the Judeo-Christian dignity of human life need to prevail here. Our fellow citizens’ lives depend on it.