#tennesseen

Ava Sasani at The Guardian:

Tennessee is poised to become the first state to in effect ban Pride flags in public and charter school classrooms, prompting outrage from the LGBTQ+ community. The Tennessee house advanced a bill, HB 1605, that forbids schools, teachers or faculty from displaying flags other than the US flag and the Tennessee state flag in public schools. The bill would also allow “a parent of a child who attends, or who is eligible to attend” a Tennessee public or charter school to sue their school district if a Pride flag is displayed “anywhere students may see the object”. The bill does not mention LGBTQ+ Pride flags or Black Lives Matter outright, but some Republican lawmakers have made it clear that the bill is meant to restrict them. The bill is expected to clear the senate as early as next week.

Members voted for the bill after a verbal showdown between the state representative Justin Jones, a Democrat, and the Republican house speaker, Cameron Sexton. Jones was blocked from speaking on the house floor after likening the anti-LGBTQ work of the Tennessee legislature to a neo-Nazi rally held in Nashville earlier this month. When Sexton moved to end the debate and proceed to a chamber-wide vote, Jones blasted the speaker for silencing criticism of the proposed ban on Pride flags. Despite opposition, house Republicans comfortably passed the bill with a final vote of 70 to 24, splitting predictably along party lines. The vote sparked backlash from LGBTQ+ advocates, who noted that the bill’s advancement comes just weeks after Nex Benedict – a non-binary teenager in Oklahoma – died following a fight at the public high school they attended.

“The flag is a symbol of acceptance, so if a teacher has a small Pride flag on the desk, or a pin on their bag, that signals to students, ‘oh, this is a safe person,’” said Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project. “When there is an affirming adult in schools, it sends a signal that there is a place in the building that is safe for LGBT youth.”

[...]

Sanders warned that the proposed ban on Pride flags harms all of Tennessee, not just LGBTQ+ and Black residents. “They are targeting our communities, but creeping restrictions on people’s expression and speech should be a concern for everyone,” he said. The bill’s primary sponsor, the Republican state representative Gino Bulso, said that the bill was inspired by parents in his district, who complained about that “certain teachers and counselors were displaying a Pride flag” in some of Williamson county’s schools.

Tennessee HB1605, which bans LGBTQ+ Pride and Black Lives Matter flags in Tennessee classrooms in both public and charter schools, is an attack on freedom of expression and an act of anti-LGBTQ+ extremism.

The Volunteer State would be the first to pass a statewide ban on LGBTQ+ Pride flags.

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