I was planning to title this post something like “What part of Lawrence don’t you understand?”, but the last two paragraphs of this AP story suggest that nine-month-old 6-3 Supreme Court decisions aren’t going to get internalized anytime soon.
DAYTON, Tenn. — Rhea County commissioners unanimously voted to ask state lawmakers to introduce legislation amending Tennessee’s criminal code so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.
“We need to keep them out of here,” said Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the motion.
County Attorney Gary Fritts also was asked by Fugate to find the best way to enact a local law banning homosexuals from living in Rhea County.
The Rhea County action came after the Senate Judiciary Committee (search) voted 7-1 Tuesday for a bill that would prohibit legal recognition of civil unions and domestic partnerships among homosexuals in Tennessee. Gay marriages already are prohibited in the state.
The state senator who represents Rhea County, Tommy Kilby, D-Wartburg, said Wednesday he hadn’t seen the resolution and couldn’t comment on it until he did.
“Yesterday in Judiciary Committee, they passed out a bill basically saying we will not recognize same-sex partnerships or civil unions from other states or foreign countries. I voted for that, and that’s my position on that issue,” Kilby said.
State Rep. Jim Vincent couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.
Rhea County, about 30 miles north of Chattanooga, is among the most conservative in Tennessee. It holds an annual festival commemorating the 1925 trial that convicted John T. Scopes on charges of teaching evolution, a verdict thrown out by the Tennessee Supreme Court on a technicality. The trial later became the subject of the play and movie, “Inherit the Wind.”
In 2002, a federal judge ruled unconstitutional the Rhea County school board’s Bible Education Ministry, a class taught in the public schools by students from a Christian college.
UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg writes:
If you read Andrew Sullivan today, he makes it sounds as if he thinks this measure is completely illegitimate even though it seems its actual intent is to ban gay marriages in their county.
The state Senate Judiciary Committee is moving against gay civil unions and domestic partnerships. The county is up to something else entirely: it wants to criminalize sodomy and to prohibit gays from living there. The state legislators prudently kept their distance from the county. What the state is trying to do, it can constitutionally do. What the county is trying to do, it can’t (under Lawrence for crimes against nature, and under core 14th-amendment law and freedom of movement, for prohibiting gays from living in the county). UPDATE AGAIN: I e-mailed Goldberg, and he acknowledged the point.
UPDATE AGAIN, The next day, the news got better.
The county that was the site of the Scopes “Monkey Trial” over the teaching of evolution Thursday reversed its call to ban gay people.
Rhea County commissioners, meeting in Dayton, took about three minutes to retreat from a request to amend state law so the county can charge gay people with crimes against nature. The Tuesday measure passed 8-0.
County attorney Gary Fritts said the initial vote triggered a “wildfire” of reaction.
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