(Headline USA) Conservative lawmakers nationwide introduced a flurry of bills to protect children against abuse and transgender predation this year, but no state’s political leaders have gone further than Tennessee.
Lawmakers passed and Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed five new bills into law.
Supporters defend the laws policy by policy, arguing that one protects parental rights, others protect girls and women and one even improves equality. Opponents reject those claims.
Colin Goodbred, a 22-year-old transgender student raised in the Nashville suburbs who attends college in New Hampshire, says the bevy of new laws could keep him from ever calling Tennessee home again.
“I think that these sorts of bills are part of what is pushing me away from identifying Tennessee as my own state, even though I spent the vast majority of my childhood, I grew up, in Tennessee,” said Goodbred, a Dartmouth College senior. “I don’t feel like I want to return there. I’m already going to college out of state. I’m wanting to work out of state. And they’ve made it abundantly clear that they do not want trans people in the state.”
Tennessee’s emergence as a pro-family leader grows out of a rightward political shift in a state Republicans already firmly controlled.
Lee’s Republican predecessor tapped the brakes on some socially conservative legislation, but emphatic GOP election wins fueled by strong support for former President Donald Trump have emboldened lawmakers since then.
That’s the political landscape in which Lee is launching his 2022 reelection bid.
Legislatures in 30 other states, most of them Republican-controlled, have considered banning transdender athletes from sports teams that do not align with their biological sex.
Twenty have weighed bans on mutilating surgeries and hormones for transgender minors.
The Human Rights Campaign has called 2021 the worst year for anti-LGBTQ legislation in recent history.
Tennessee this year banned transgender athletes from playing girls public high school or middle school sports.
The state is poised to become the first to require government buildings and businesses that are open to the public to post signs if they let trans people use multi-person bathrooms and other facilities associated with their gender identity.
Public schools, meanwhile, will soon risk losing lawsuits if they let transgender students or employees use multi-person bathrooms or locker rooms that do not reflect their sex at birth.
Lee also signed legislation to require school districts to alert parents 30 days before students are taught about sexual orientation or gender identity, letting them opt out of the lesson.
“Tennessee is taking the crown for the state of hate,” said Sasha Buchert, a Lambda Legal senior attorney.
The governor recently defended the school-bathroom rule. “That bill provides equal access to every student,” he said.
Neighboring Arkansas is the only other state to ban abusive practices for minors like hormone replacement and genital mutilation, one of three new laws to protect children.
Montana has two new legal restrictions for transgender people.
Sports bans have also passed in a handful of other states, including Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia.
The recent wave of bills has had support from conservative groups including the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom, with the latter offering model legislation for transgender athletics bills.
The push in statehouses follows Democratic President Joe Biden‘s executive order prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity.
A survey by The Trevor Project showed 94% of LGBTQ youth said recent political debates over the issue had negatively affected their mental health. A separate question found more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.
The Trevor Project has been contacted by Tennessee youths in crisis 2,400 times over the past year, according to Executive Director Amit Paley.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
