The Tennessee Legislature is set to act on four awful bills, and one excellent one. We need your help to stop the Christian Nationalist legislative agenda and promote laws based on science and reason.
4 bad bills
The bad bills would:
1. Make the bible Tennessee’s official state book (SB2696/HB778).
2. Burden schools with unnecessary rules and require mandatory release time for religious classes. (SB2473/HB2542)
3. Punish gender transition as child abuse (SB2215/HB2576).
4. Ban transgender student athletes from sports (HB1572/SB2077).
All of these bills are rooted in conservative religious ideology and intended to elevate Christians to a favored status. FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor published an op-ed condemning the bible-as-the-state-book bill that contains many talking points and should be linked or sent to your legislators. The then-governor, Bill Haslam, vetoed a similar bill in 2016.
The mandatory release time bill is unnecessary and burdensome. It’s meant to encourage and promote the idea of release time — letting children leave class to get religious instruction. This always leads to bullying, division, peer pressure and other problems. This would also force schools to bus kids to and from the instruction (though the parents would have to reimburse the school for the cost).
The two anti-trans bills are bigotry rooted in religion — attempts to other-ize children and punish people who don’t fit into categories foisted on us by an ancient book of fairy tales.
1 good bill
The good bill that we want you to support is a comprehensive sex education bill (SB2583/HB2434) that would “provide students with medically accurate, age-appropriate sex education that teaches students about abstinence, contraception, consent and how to develop healthy relationships and communication skills.” Amen to that.
Please take a moment to contact your state lawmakers and make known your positions on this slate of bills. Click on the red “Take action” link below and follow the prompt provided. Feel free to use or adapt our talking points.
