Tag: tennessee

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee Gonna Ban All The Drag, ‘Cause That’s The Kinda Ignorant Bigot He Is

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Back when he was elected governor in 2018, some folks thought Tennessee Republican Bill Lee was just another big bid’ness idiot, somebody who would mostly stay focused on that in office. Nobody ever thought that about the Tennessee Legislature. Tennessee’s Republican-controlled Legislature is one of America’s most concentrated collections of white hayseed bigots you’d never leave your dog alone with, much less your child. Just today a Republican state representative is half-assedly trying to walk back remarks where he asked if Tennessee could bring back “hanging from a tree” in death penalty cases.

There is nothing surprising about this. This is what elected Republicans in Tennessee are like.

And Bill Lee wants to let us know he’s just like those Republicans in the Legislature, who have just sent him a bill to ban drag shows, which he plans to sign. All these dumbass white social conservatives (plus a couple of embarrassing socially conservative Black Democrats from Memphis) have been brainwashed by religious Right libel to believe that drag queens “groom” and “sexualize” children. Lee also plans to sign a bill banning gender-affirming care for trans kids.

But wait, who grooms and sexualizes children? Ask the Southern Baptist Convention how many fingers it would take to count up all the pastors and youth leaders in Tennessee and nationwide who have been been accused of sexual abuse. Ask Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis how manysexual abusersof children they’ve harbored in that one megachurch. Ask the Baptists about this youth pastor in Rutherford County. Or this one from Knox County. Ask the Church of Christ about this former youth pastor from Benton County. Ask the conservative Christians about this child rapist pastor from Tipton County. Or this former Clarksville, Tennessee, pastor who was arrested in Michigan for raping teenagers. Or this former pastor from Decatur, Alabama, who also faces charges in Tennessee.

We can go on. You get millions of news results when you Google pastors who have been accused and/or convicted of child sexual abuse. Cross-reference them with Tennessee and, boy howdy it’s still a shitload.

But tell us more about drag queens, Bill Lee and the Tennessee Legislature, you fuckin’ hicks.

And they try to tell stories about drag queens. They have made-up stories and deceptively edited shit they saw on the internet. But they don’t have anything real.

When asked for specific examples of inappropriate drag shows taking place in front of children, Lee did not cite any, only pointing to a nearby school building and saying he was concerned about protecting children.

Of course he didn’t. It’s an imaginary spooky story conservative Christians tell each other, just like the one about litterboxes in elementary schools.

So, the Tennessee bill. The AP notes that Tennessee has moved the fastest to ban drag, as part of its Nazi crusade against anybody who isn’t white, straight, and conservative Christian. You know, because they’re looking out for the kids.

It’s a really stupid, poorly written bill — What? From a Tennessee Republican? PSHAW! — and it’s gonna be a fuckshow to enforce, assuming anybody actually wants to try to enforce it and this law doesn’t set a land speed record for Most Quickly Ignored State Law Ever Made.

Under the Tennessee bill, the words “drag show” are not explicitly stated. Instead, the legislation changes the definition of adult cabaret in Tennessee’s law to mean “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors.” The bill also says that “male or female impersonators” now fall under adult cabaret among topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers and strippers.

The proposal then bans adult cabaret from taking place on public property or any place where minors might be present. It threatens performers with a misdemeanor charge, or a felony if it’s a repeat offense.

We’ve said it a thousand times, but if you think drag is inherently sexual — and a lot of these conservative Christian men do — then that’s about your psychosexual profile, not about the drag show.

Speaking of, a picture has turned up of Bill Lee dressed in drag when he was in high school. Lee says it doesn’t count because it was a “powder puff football game.” His mouthpiece spokesperson said when asked that “[This] bill specifically protects children from obscene, sexualized entertainment, and any attempt to conflate this serious issue with lighthearted school traditions is dishonest and disrespectful to Tennessee families.” Obviously, that’s a rightwing Christian lie, because if rightwing Christians’ mouths are moving, they’re lying.

But these responses should make clear that this bill is intended to directly target LGBTQ+ people. Bill Lee doin’ a “boys bein’ boys wearin’ dresses at the football game” thing in high school? That’s different!

Bill Lee came to Memphis on Wednesday for the opening of a YMCA. At that event, two people who were peacefully protesting this bill were detained and manhandled by the Memphis police, who you’d think would be a little more careful these days about laying their hands on innocent people when cameras are watching.

The Daily Memphian got some choice quotes from Memphis drag queen Bella DuBalle, who was there and was also removed from the event by cops. (She said it got “a bit handsy,” but it was otherwise minor.)

“Bill Lee is a liar and a fascist,” Bella DuBalle shouted through a megaphone as Lee began his remarks. […]

“The bill fails to define what drag is — what a male or female impersonator is,” DuBalle said. “It makes no exception for cosplayers, professional wrestlers, people dressing up on Halloween or most importantly gender nonconforming trans and nonbinary people who are living their daily lives.”

“I want to know. Am I in drag right now? Is this a dress?” she asked of the purple robe she was wearing. “Do I need to put on a wig? Do I need to put on some makeup? Do I need to put on heels? At what point does it become sexual?”

Bella DuBalle is one fun and quotable drag queen. She did an extensive interview for BuzzFeed, which y’all should read. First, though, watch this viral video of her delivering a message about this bill during a drag brunch at the Atomic Rose in Memphis, which is literally “ten feet off of Beale” like the song says:

DuBalle said:

“The original Pride was a riot and this year we need to remind them that we will fight for our liberation,” Kyle says in the video, which has garnered millions of views across TikTok and Twitter. “We will raise our bricks up high again and let them know that we will not go quietly.”

What? Did Tennessee Republicans think this was going to make the LGBTQ+ people and the drag queens go away? Bless their hearts.

On April 1, the day the ban is set to go into effect, the Atomic Rose will host its Brick Ball, a drag show to commemorate the 54th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion. [Slade Kyle, the person who Bella DuBalle is when they are not performing] said they are inspired by trans advocates like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two trans women who are largely credited for throwing the first brick as police raided the New York gay bar in the 1970s.

“It’s a reminder that we will fight for our freedom, if necessary. It’s not a threat. It’s a promise,” Kyle said. “And I am terrified to have to hold that promise … but we have to fight even if we’re terrified. Nobody wants to have to be the next Marsha P. Johnson.”

So that’s the temperature things are in Tennessee right now, in case you were wonderin’.

We’ll have much more to say about this as time goes on, we reckon. Watch this space.

[AP / Daily Memphian / BuzzFeed]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here!

And once that doesn’t exist, I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@[email protected]) and at Post!

Have you heard that Wonkette DOES NOT EXIST without your donations? Please hear it now, and if you have ever enjoyed a Wonkette article, throw us some bucks, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE!

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#Tennessee #Gov #Bill #Lee #Gonna #Ban #Drag #Kinda #Ignorant #Bigot

Tennessee To Only Prevent/Treat HIV/AIDS In *Nice* People, Not Those Sinners

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The far Right’s panic mongering against trans people will soon have a larger body count, since apparently stochastic terrorism hasn’t killed enough people yet. In January, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) announced he would reject federal funding for HIV testing, prevention, and treatment, complaining that the federal money came with too many strings attached. By that, he meant that the grants from the US Centers for Disease control specify that the money be used for the populations most at risk for HIV: men who have sex with men, trans folks, and intravenous drug users. Lee’s announcement was especially bizarre since Tennessee is currently experiencing one of the nation’s worst HIV epidemics.

But going way back to the earliest days of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Republicans have never liked preventing a deadly disease that affects people they think are icky, so Lee announced that instead of accepting the federal funds that have to go to those who are actually at highest risk, Tennessee would instead refocus its HIV prevention efforts on nicer people who aren’t actually at much risk, as the Washington Post reported:

State officials said they would continue to support HIV testing and prevention but would focus on first responders, victims of human trafficking, and mothers and children. In contrast, the federal program prioritizes men who have sex with men and transgender people, particularly in communities of color, who are at greatest risk of HIV, according to federal surveillance data.

Lee’s decision wasn’t simply driven by a desire to stage a 2023 revival of And the Band Played On, although we can’t guarantee he wasn’t at least a little nostalgic for the days when Ronald Reagan couldn’t bring himself to say the word “AIDS” and he and Nancy refused to even acknowledge their good friend Rock Hudson as the disease was killing him.

Nope, as NBC News reports, Lee’s administration chose to reject federal HIV funding, including grant programs begun under Donald Trump, largely in reaction to a campaign of anti-trans panic orchestrated last fall by rightwing “Christian” creep Matt Walsh and his Daily Wire boss Ben Shapiro. The two must be simply over the moon at the prospect that the funding cuts will leave more LGBTQ+ people undiagnosed and vulnerable to what’s still a dangerous but treatable disease. Like, if anyone’s there to provide the testing and treatment.

NBC News summarizes the fearmongering thusly:

A leading voice in the right’s opposition to the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, Matt Walsh, a columnist for the conservative media outlet Daily Wire, published a series of widely read tweets on Sept. 20 targeting Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s treatment of minors at its Transgender Health Clinic. “They now castrate, sterilize, and mutilate minors as well as adults,” Walsh said.

The next day, Walsh appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to publicize his investigation, and Ben Shapiro, a conservative commentator who co-founded Daily Wire, further amplified Walsh’s attacks on Vanderbilt on his YouTube channel and podcast, decrying the “nonsense garbage that a boy can be a girl and a girl can be a boy.”

It’s bullshit, but it got Lee’s attention, and he echoed the claims, calling for a “thorough investigation” into gender-affirming care, and adding in the weird claim that “religious liberties” were somehow being crushed by the existence of trans people.

While it’s long been clear that Lee’s decision was in part prompted by the panic stirred up by Walsh’s trans-panic lies, NBC News spoke to four sources within the Tennessee Health Department who confirmed that the state government was making decisions connected to Walsh’s frothing lies about Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, Planned Parenthood, and the state’s Transgender Task Force, accusing them of all sorts of horrors.

In October, the pressure wound its way to the unit that combats HIV, sexually transmitted infections and viral hepatitis at the Tennessee Health Department.

On Oct. 24, the unit’s director, Dr. Pamela Talley, told employees that because of the social media firestorm over Vanderbilt, information about the Tennessee Transgender Task Force — a volunteer team the unit established in 2018 to focus on trans health and HIV prevention — and other trans resources had been scrubbed from the department’s website. That is according to two staffers present, who, like two of their colleagues, spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

In November, staff were told that federal funding for the Transgender Task Force, and for Planned Parenthood’s HIV-prevention efforts, which mostly involved education and condom distribution, would be terminated at the end of 2022.

“There were at least three different levels of leadership on the call,” a staffer said. “It was discussed that there had been media attention around the Vanderbilt trans health clinic, which led those reporters to learn about the trans task force, and that they were funded by [the state Health Department] HIV prevention program and that all HIV prevention contracts were being reviewed.”

Then in January, Lee’s administration announced it would reject the entire $8.3 million in two grant programs from the CDC for HIV prevention, treatment, and surveillance, so that was that. $6.2 million had been allocated for statewide prevention and monitoring efforts, and another $2.1 million was specifically for Shelby County, which includes Memphis; the county has among the highest HIV infection rates in the country.

Lee’s administration claimed the state would provide an equal amount of funding, but also that the focus would shift to nice wholesome people, wink-wink nudge-nudge. As NBC reports,

Currently, the priority populations for the CDC grant for Shelby County, for example, include LGBTQ people, sex workers and those who inject drugs, are unhoused or are formerly incarcerated.

Lee’s press officer, Jade Byers, said in an email that the administration “is committed to maintaining the same level of funding, while more efficiently and effectively serving vulnerable populations, such as victims of human trafficking, mothers and children, and first responders.”

Hey, remember how Ryan White, the little kid who was infected by his hemophilia treatments, made it finally OK for powerful straight people to say maybe AIDS was a problem? This is kind of like that, except Tennessee is saying it will only help the Ryan Whites and not all those bad people.

As Greg Millett, director of public policy at The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) pointed out, promising to help people at far lower risk is a pretty bad way to fight an epidemic.

“Tennessee is preferring to fight a fictitious epidemic rather than their very real HIV epidemic. […] First responders are just not at risk for HIV anywhere in the United States. Sexual trafficking is awful, but it’s not a major contributor for HIV cases in Tennessee or elsewhere.”

NBC News also notes that between 2016 and 2020, only one to six babies annually were born with HIV in Tennessee. So really, no need to spend millions on them.

Oh, there’s also the tiny matter of the people who actually are at risk for HIV infection, but who don’t need to be considered because they’re filthy sinners:

More than half of new diagnoses in Tennessee were in men who have sex with men in 2019, according to the state Health Department’s surveillance reports. And in 2016, the CDC released a report warning that 220 of the country’s counties, including 41 in Tennessee, were at high risk of HIV and hepatitis C outbreaks among people who inject drugs (that population accounted for 5% of new Tennessee HIV diagnoses in 2019).

And while overall HIV cases have been declining nationwide, new infection rates have been stable or increasing “in most Southern states, where the bulk of transmissions occur.” Just not among first responders, apparently.

In conclusion, we’re in hell and a lot of people are making a lot of money making things worse, the end.

[NBC News / WaPo]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please give $5 or $10 monthly so we can keep you up to date on all the madness.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#Tennessee #PreventTreat #HIVAIDS #Nice #People #Sinners