State Rep. Gino Bulso speaks at a Humphreys County GOP forum, July 26, 2025
The return of the 114th Tennessee General Assembly sees the continuation of America’s culture war. This time, the state’s Republican supermajority is emboldened after the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term — and his self-described campaign of “retribution.”
On Jan. 13, the first day of the state’s legislative session, the first bill passed in the House was House Bill 884. Filed in 2025, the legislation expands the state’s definition of an “adult-oriented establishment” to include commercial businesses, with the bill now working its way through Senate committees.
State Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood), a self-described “culture warrior,” has once again filed several anti-LGBTQ bills. Among those is HB 1473, which openly aims to circumvent the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the 2015 U.S Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage. Bulso’s bill “prohibits the board of professional responsibility from disciplining or sanctioning an attorney for declining to officiate a marriage between two persons of the same sex.” HB 1742, or the “Banning Bostock Act,” would remove prohibitions against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, referencing the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County.
Bulso previously made national headlines when he sponsored a bill designed to effectively ban Pride flags from schools, though it died on the Senate floor last year. He pledged to bring the bill back this session, but has instead offered a new bill — HB 1474, or the “No Pride Flag or Month Act,” which reads that “an LGBTQ flag or emblem must not be displayed or maintained on property owned by this state or a political subdivision of this state,” effectively expanding the proposed ban beyond just schools.
The Brentwood lawyer says he will also push for the passage of his 2025 bill HB 26 — the “Unborn Child Protection Act of 2025” — which would see civil penalties for the use of abortion pills that are sent through the mail and result in “the death of an unborn child.” HB 1491, or the “Protecting Religious Liberty and Expression in Public Schools Act,” is another Bulso bill. The legislation aims to “put voluntary prayer back in public schools” and “teach the Bible as history and literature” and has already seen pushback from some Williamson County Schools Board members.
Republican lawmakers’ agreement with the right-wing organization is not backed by legislation
Bulso is also sponsoring HB 1476, or “The Charlie Kirk Act,” which he says “requires our public institutions to adopt a statement of academic freedom.” “It requires them to enforce it,” says Bulso, “and it requires discipline in the event that we have violence that’s taken against invited speakers or even someone trying to drown them out and not allow them to speak.” He also seeks to see the state designate Sept. 10 as Charlie Kirk Day. Both bills are named after the right-wing political activist who was assassinated last year in Utah. On Jan. 15, the House quickly passed a resolution honoring Kirk, and the state has partnered with Kirk’s political organization Turning Point USA to establish Club America chapters — which will push Republican talking points — in “every high school, every college” in the state.
But Bulso is not alone when it comes to pushing culture war legislation. SB 1664/HB 1665 would prohibit health care providers from “asking certain listed gender-related questions to a minor unless a parent is physically present and fully informed and provides written consent to such questions and the questions are directly related to the diagnosis or treatment of a specific medical or psychological condition currently being evaluated.” That legislation is sponsored by Sen. Paul Rose (R-Tipton) and Rep. Aron Maberry (R-Clarksville), who are also sponsoring SB 1665/HB 1666 — which would include “honorifics” in the “prohibition on requiring a student, teacher, employee, or contractor to use or provide a person’s preferred name or pronoun.”
HB 1271/SB 936, meanwhile, “declares that the policy of this state is that there are only two sexes, a biological male and a biological female.” SB 2118, introduced by Sen. Adam Lowe (R-Calhoun), would prohibit TennCare coverage for medical procedures “for the purpose of enabling the individual to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the individual’s sex, or treat purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the individual’s sex and asserted identity.” Another bill, SB 2045, introduced by Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis), would require a quarterly report to be filed with the state’s department of health on the “number and type of disciplinary actions taken against a health care provider for knowingly performing or offering to perform on a minor, or administering or offering to administer to a minor, a prohibited medical procedure.”
From immigration enforcement to voucher expansion, the Republican supermajority is pushing for Tennessee to be the nation’s conservative leader
