Monday night, Tennessee Governor Haslam (R) signed an anti-gay bill the Tennessee Equality Project calls the “special access to discriminate” law. http://gay.americablog.com/2011/05/tn-chamber-changes-position-now-opposed.html Replicating the method of Colorado’s Amendment 2 (passed in 1992, struck down by the US Supreme Court in 1996), the state law preempts anti-discrimination protections at the local level. Nashville’s ban on discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity was instantly vaporized. The law enables discrimination on the pretext that there should be a uniform civil rights standard that applies statewide in interest of promoting business growth. It’s hoped that such a “rational basis,” however specious, will distinguish the Tennessee discrimination enabling act from the Colorado version and save it from being struck down on equal protection grounds. The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce lobbied hard for the legislation, but when the national companies on its board came under fire, the C of C reversed their position just as the Governor was putting pen to paper. Too little, too late.
By saying that it’s good for business to enable anti-gay/anti-trans discrimination, the Volunteer State just poked a finger in the eye of the national LGBT community. Unless we can prove that assumption counter-empirical, other states will seize upon the same pretext and follow suit. Already calls are being heard to boycott businesses based in the Volunteer State or that indirectly supported the law through the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce (Fed Ex is guilty on both counts.) That’s what happened to Colorado businesses after passage of Amendment 2. I’d say Tennessee just put the LGBT communities and our friends and allies on the spot.
