(Video not safe for work, because of the swears.)
Dear lazy national activists:
“The state of Tennessee” isn’t trying to make it illegal for teachers and other school officials to acknowledge the existence of homosexuality. One Republican state senator is. In fact, this isn’t even the only bill he submitted this year that would serve to isolate gay kids. (Does that make his agenda a “gay agenda”?)
Anyway.
Lazy national activists, when you don’t highlight who is at fault for any given problem (a specific legislator or political party, a lobbying group, ALEC) you make problems seem systemic rather than conquerable. And when people feel like their vote doesn’t matter, they don’t vote. They disengage. And we end up with some real winners in office.
On top of that, when you make it about “the state of Tennessee” rather than “one carpetbagging state senator,” that also serves to discourage businesses from moving here. That hurts the QUILTBAG too — not just the kind of people that support this time-wasting, taxpayer-money-squandering, homophobic nonsense.
Thanks (and especially thanks for putting your money where your foul mouths are by giving to the TEP), but try again.
That would be an easier case to make if 81 percent of Tennessee voters hadn’t approved the anti-gay-marriage amendment in 2006. Officially, at least, the entire state of Tennessee really is anti-gay.
Voter turnout is abysmal in this state—and from my own GOTV activities, I’m pretty confident it’s because the average person feels like it doesn’t matter who’s in office. Then only the diehards go vote, and you get folks like Campfield putting forth legislation like this.
So, perhaps 81% of the people that bothered to vote in a non-presidential-election year are “anti-gay.” But given how few of those eligible to vote actually vote most times, and the demographics of those who do regularly vote, that’s hardly representative of the population of Tennessee.