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By: CHRISTOPHER SEELY
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Just two days after gaining national attention for a unanimous motion to criminalize
gay sex and a call to ban gays altogether, county commissioners in Rhea County,
Tenn., last week retreated from their anti-gay offensive.
The original motion, passed 8-0 on March 16, asked state lawmakers to amend
the state’s criminal code to allow Rhea County to charge gay residents
with crimes against nature as a way to force them from the county.
“We need to keep them out of here,” said Commissioner J.C. Fugate,
who made the motion, according to the Associated Press.
Fugate did not respond to interview requests from Southern Voice.
Commissioners also asked the county attorney during the March 16 meeting for
a measure to ban gays from Rhea County, AP reported.
But last summer’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v.
Texas struck down sodomy laws across the country on the grounds of privacy
protection.
“The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by
making their private sexual conduct a crime,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
wrote in the 6-3 decision.
On March 18, Rhea County commissioners distanced themselves from the controversial
vote after consulting with the county attorney, who advised the commission
that it could not ban gays or criminalize their sexual behavior.
Rhea County Attorney Gary Fritts said commissioners misunderstood what they
were voting for, thinking they were voting to show support for a state constitutional
amendment to ban gay marriage, not criminalize being homosexuality.
“They wanted to send a message to our [state] representative and senator
that Rhea County supports the ban on same-sex marriage,” Fritts told
AP. “Same-sex marriage is what it was all about. It was to stop people
from coming here and getting married and living in Rhea County.”
Fritts did not respond to Southern Voice interview requests.
The Tennessee Legislature is currently debating two bills to make gay unions
illegal.
On March 23, a committee in the state House approved a proposal to amend Tennessee’s
constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman.
The proposed amendment needs more than 50 percent of the votes in the state
House and Senate this year and a two-thirds majority vote in the state House
and Senate in either 2005 or 2006, before being placed on a 2006 ballot for
voters to decide.
The state House is also considering a bill to outlaw civil unions and domestic
partnerships.
Tennessee law already defines marriage as a heterosexual union.
The Rhea County Commission vote was discriminatory regardless of which issue
members thought they were supporting, according to Jack Senterfitt, a senior
staff attorney with the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund’s southern
regional office in Atlanta.
Lambda Legal won the Lawrence case in the U.S. Supreme Court last June.
“It seems to me that what was motivating the action, however it may
have been described, was clearly an intent to discriminate against homosexuals,
because it is my view that the proposed marriage amendment to the Tennessee
Constitution is motivated also by an intent to discriminate against homosexuals,” Senterfitt
said.
Some gay marriage opponents also criticized the commission’s decision,
according to Todd Young, policy director at the Atlanta-based Southeastern
Legal Foundation, an organization that supports banning gay marriages in state
and federal constitutions.
“It is a poor reflection on someone that suggests that they are trying
to support a constitutional amendment on gay marriage,” Young said. “We
would condemn that type of behavior because it reduces the legitimate policy
discussion on gay marriage to the base level of an issue that has already been
decided by the Supreme Court.
“I’m hoping that we are able to have more civil discussions on
this,” he said.
Rhea County, located north of Chattanooga in eastern Tennessee, was also the
site of the infamous 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial,” in which John
T. Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution. The verdict was later reversed
but the county still holds an annual festival commemorating the trial.
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