Warning to Women: Evangelicals Demand Subservience from Tennessee’s New GOP Majority
by Jeff Woods
Evangelicals would like to clear up any confusion over who's running the state legislature. The new Republican majority won't start meeting until January, but already the party's bug-eyed base is demanding top billing for its pet causes and warning unbelievers to watch their backs.
Christian Right leaders are instructing lawmakers to put "values issues" first in the upcoming session—even at a time of economic calamity, with state tax collections falling as much as $800 million below budget.
"Some folks just don't get it!" exclaims David Fowler, president of the Rev. James Dobson-affiliated Family Action Council.
In a message to supporters, Fowler dismisses more cautious observers who are advising Republicans against full-out pursuit of the conservative Christian agenda.
"They could not be more dead wrong!" he writes. "Why should the GOP even consider taking advice from those forums that have repeatedly and consistently opposed them every step of the way? ... for Republicans to ignore those who brought them to the dance is political suicide."
Outlawing abortions, of course, is at the top of the to-do list.
Likely to pass early in next year's session is a resolution asking voters to amend the Tennessee constitution to strip away abortion rights. This almost passed last session when the Family Action Council generated an astounding 100,000 emails to lawmakers in 10 days.
Amending the constitution would let the legislature ban abortions in the state should Roe v. Wade ever be overturned. Until then, Republicans will content themselves with pushing an array of measures to try to intimidate pregnant women who are thinking about having an abortion.
One idea—a golden oldie from past sessions—would require doctors to read a scary script on the evils of abortion to patients. That's what passes for "informed consent" among evangelicals. Women who are undaunted then might be forced under another proposed law to look at an ultrasound of their fetus before an abortion and obtain a death certificate afterward.
Under the Democrats' leadership, such bills have been killed in House subcommittees. Not anymore.
"Instead of dealing with the budget and financial crisis in this state and dealing with schools that are crumbling and in chaos and disarray, and instead of helping the thousands of Tennesseans who are without health care, they've decided they're going to attack women," says Jeff Teague, president of Planned Parenthood in Middle and East Tennessee. "Their goal is to terrorize and scare women."
As it turns out, just because you're against abortion doesn't mean you're for family planning. So the pro-life crowd will almost certainly try again next year to restrict federal money that now goes to Planned Parenthood for free contraceptives to the poor. Upward of 10,000 women across the state use these services.
What else is on the evangelical agenda? Censoring television "indecency," teaching creationism in science classes, banning gay adoptions, prohibiting any mention of homosexuality in public schools—the famous "Don't Say Gay" bill—and the list goes on.
Our personal favorite is last year's proposal to bar anyone from forcibly implanting a microchip under anyone else's skin. That law is needed, proponents say, because implanted microchips could become Satan's Mark of the Beast, which we all know is one way the devil will gain dominance over the Earth during the time of Tribulation.
The champion of this critically urgent legislation is the Tennessee Eagle Forum, which now wields considerable power over the legislature. Its president is Bobbie Patray, Tennessee's own Phyllis Schlafly. As her office voice mail says, "Please leave a message after the tone and remember: If God doesn't give us what we asked for, we can be sure he has something far better in mind." That's reassuring.
"The sky's the limit for how crazy they want to be," says Rep. Henry Fincher, a Democrat from Cookeville, who helpfully offered advice to the Republicans in a Scene interview.
Fincher points out that Democrats lost the legislature—ironically enough for the first time since the Civil War—because white voters thronged to the polls to vote against the black guy running for president, and they happened to vote for all the Republicans on the ballot while they were at it.
"If Republicans mistake that singular occurrence for a mandate, they can get in trouble fast," Fincher says. "They have a challenging road in front of them. They have to run pretty far to the right. It would be real easy for them to go too far because they've been pandering to extreme groups for so long. It would be real easy for them to alienate the mainstream."
These warnings are coming from the state's few Republican moderates as well as Democrats, but right-wingers dismiss it as nonsense. Nationally, Republicans worry their party has been commandeered by its extreme wing. In Tennessee, that's a cause for celebration.
Asked whether the party can meet the pent-up demands of fundamentalists in the coming session, the brash young Republican Rep. Stacey Campfield laughs. "They won't have to make demands," he says. "We all want to do what's best for the state and for freedom and liberty."
State GOP flack Bill Hobbs agrees: "The people who elected the Republican majority know exactly what they stand for."
According to them, Tennessee voters put them in power precisely to fight the culture wars. That kind of hubris, which is common to the True Believer, leads to perilous overreaching. That's encouraging for Democrats trying to retake the legislature in two years, but not for Tennessee in the meantime.
Comments (6)
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Yeah...I know what you mean. Having such biased scaremongering articles written in a rag like this really makes you question moving to TN. Got to love the little jab they throw in about the dem's losing because we are all racist. Great, huh?!?!
While I am not a woman I will say this. Many of us are sick and tired of these people trying to tell others how to live. This is supposed to be a free country. Everyone has the right to believe whatever they like but they do NOT have the right to force those beliefs on others. So I say, believe what you want, live the way you want, and, above all, mind your own business!
What a pleasure it will be to hear real debates on issues in the House without learning of a Naifeh fiat proclaiming "so_&_so won't be passing gas through the Legislature." Jimmy, can now spend more of his time drinking, groping women and playing poker. The knee-jerk-no era of McMillan, Odom, Briley, Sherry Jones, and Maddox, has finally ended.
I guess Tennessee men need to learn to live without women. If even one of these measures pass, all the young, single and attractive women will be moving far out of the state. Heck, they may take some of their older, married and still attractive sisters with them. Maybe if women actually did that, white men would learn to stop being so sexist and racist.
