Tennessee Governor Signs Bill Blocking Pro-Homosexual City Ordinances

Tennessee’s governor recently signed legislation designed to ensure that the state’s local governments do not endorse and legitimize immoral sexual behavior in their local ordinances.

In what is considered the first-in-the-nation type of law, Governor Bill Haslam has signed legislation revoking a Nashville ordinance that protects employees based on their homosexuality or transgender status.

The Tennessee House and Senate passed the legislation that prevents local governments from enacting nondiscrimination ordinances that go beyond existing state and federal law. It also repeals a measure already adopted by the Nashville Metro Council.

Tennessee law already prohibits employers from discriminating based on “race, creed, color, religion, sex, age, or national origin.” The Nashville Metro Council went further in early April, requiring businesses that contract with the city to add employment policies with protections for the categories of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

The bill has caused a huge uproar among homosexual activists in the state. When liberals learned that the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce had endorsed the bill, they launched an all-out attack on the Chamber’s member businesses, accusing them of bigotry and intolerance. Sadly, most of the large businesses (including Nissan, Whirlpool, AT&T, FedEx, and Comcast) that had originally supported the bill have now buckled under pressure from homosexual activists, and are now in opposition to the new law.

While it is lamentable that these businesses have no stomach for taking a stand, the passage of the bill is a positive development overall. The state legislature and governor should both be commended for their willingness to stand up against the prevailing forces in the culture that seek to normalize sexual perversion.