With the gay rights movement gaining strength from a pair of landmark Supreme Court rulings, even torch-red Tennessee is showing signs of change.
This is the state where lawmakers obsess over the homosexual menace, embracing new and ever more ingenious ways to torment gays and lesbians. Just seven years ago, in a statewide referendum, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage won a resounding 80 percent of the vote.
But this summer, same-sex couples have been emboldened to go to courthouses in publicized events to demand marriage rights — despite some fears they might lose their jobs for standing up. And now two places in Tennessee have turned conventional thinking on its head by acting to advance gay equality.
The Knox County Commission — run by Republicans in the home of none other than seriocomic state Sen. Stacey "Don't Say Gay" Campfield — decided on July 22 to include sexual identification and gender identity under its employee nondiscrimination ordinance. There was hardly any discussion, much less opposition.
Next came an even bigger surprise. Two weeks later, the Chattanooga suburb of Collegedale made history by becoming the first city in Tennessee to offer family health insurance to the same-sex spouses of employees.
Since last fall, Collegedale police officer Kat Cooper had been asking for health benefits for the woman she wed in Maryland, where same-sex marriages are legal. "Small ripples can precipitate huge waves," she told the city commission Aug. 6 at a public hearing. "In this case, a great opportunity lies in your hands."
The city's commission granted her request by a vote of 4-1. You could almost hear Stephen Colbert do a spit-take.
Collegedale is a most unlikely place for groundbreaking progressivism. It was founded as the site of the conservative Southern Adventist University in 1916 and remains largely populated by members of the Seventh Day Adventist faith. According to its website, the church believes "marriage was divinely established in Eden and affirmed by Jesus to be a lifelong union between a man and a woman in loving companionship," while "sin has perverted God's ideals for marriage and family" and "homosexuality is a manifestation of the disturbance and brokenness in human inclinations and relations caused by the entrance of sin into the world."
Because Collegedale is so conservative and religious, however, the news created an Internet sensation. Liberal bloggers held it up as a prime example of America's changing attitudes — a groundswell that's led more than 170 cities and counties across the country to put nondiscrimination laws on their books.
"Collegedale reflects a movement that is happening at the local level across the country," the Human Rights Campaign wrote on its blog. "Where states and the federal government have failed to act, municipalities have stepped up."
That's not to say Collegedale residents are of one mind on the issue. Protesters pictured at the hearing held placards reading "Please Speak Up for Traditional Marriage." The lone dissenting vote came from Collegedale Mayor John Turner, who said he'd heard from 74 citizens opposing the resolution.
City Commissioner Debbie Baker, who is not an Adventist but a member of the equally conservative Pentecostal church, tells the Scene the response to the vote surprised her.
"Collegedale was founded by the Seventh Day Adventists and we still hold the values of God, family and country, in that order. We don't support gay marriage but we do support treating people equally. Jesus treated people fairly," Baker says.
"If one of our employees is married legally outside Tennessee, even if we don't recognize it in the state of Tennessee, that couple is entitled to benefits. We have heterosexual couples who have married outside the state, and we have never questioned their marriages. We're talking about health insurance basically. I can't see denying anyone health insurance.
"This has gone viral on Facebook and we've been in the news. But we weren't trying to make some huge statement to the nation. That was not our intent. Our intent was to take care of our own. We're just trying to do what's right in the eyes of God."
Activists across the state are hoping more and more of their fellow citizens will sympathize. The victories in Collegedale and Knox County have set the stage for a statewide effort to chip away at Tennessee's statutes governing same-sex marriage and its related benefits.
On Aug. 9, just days after the Collegedale vote, TV cameras followed gay couples from Nashville, Memphis and Mt. Juliet to courthouses. The Tennessee Equality Project — the state's main LGBT lobbying group — mobilized the couples who sought marriage licenses.
Many more wanted to go, according to the group's chairman, Chris Sanders, "but then they realized, 'Oh, if I do this, it could put my job at risk.' There was really a lot of fear about doing this."
But Sanders, who's accustomed to being bloodied in losing fights with the legislature, suddenly is upbeat about LGBT rights in Tennessee.
"Momentum's on our side," he says.
The couples knew they'd be turned away without marriage licenses, but that wasn't the point. Their goal — besides generating favorable publicity for their cause — was to create legal standing, personal stakes in the outcome of this controversy, so they can sue to overturn the Tennessee Constitution's ban on gay marriage.
"We've always wanted to get married in the state of Tennessee. So we decided to go for it," says Stephanie Shelton, who lives in Mt. Juliet with her partner Lisa Cross and their 4-year-old daughter Amelia. "We knew they'd say no. That was no surprise. But we thought, 'Well, if we can at least start something and help make a difference, then all the better.' "
The Tennessee lawsuit, which could come any day now, would join an anticipated barrage of legal actions across America. These follow the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions on June 26 to allow gay marriage in California and to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages even if those couples were legally married by their home state.
Of the two decisions, the ruling on the federal law is the one with more wide-ranging implications. Although it left in place state prohibitions against gay marriage, it also seemed to invite challenges to them.
In states that recognize same-sex marriage, the court ruled, Washington can't deny federal marriage benefits to gay couples. According to the court, that's not only because Washington shouldn't intrude into state business — a question of federalism — but also because it's discriminating against gay couples to treat them like second-class citizens in this way.
In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that same-sex couples are denied a "status of immense import," and that the law against gay marriage "humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples."
"What has been explained to this point should more than suffice to establish that the principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage," Kennedy wrote.
Lawsuits already filed in at least seven states assert that the majority opinion's logic also should hold for state laws. As the suits argue, doesn't it stand to reason that the state laws' main purpose is to belittle gays and lesbians and deny them the same rights as straight couples?
That laws against gay marriage stigmatize and harm children, in particular, is a point that the impending lawsuit in this state almost certainly will make. Shelton worries that once her daughter Amelia starts school she will face taunting from classmates and other hardships because her parents cannot legally marry.
"Amelia's asked us about fathers and daddies. We tell her everyone has different types of families, and this is our family," Shelton says. "It would help to say, 'Yes we're married.' We tell her that in our hearts we're married. We say, 'In our eyes we're married. If anybody asks you, you tell them we're both your mommy and we're married in our hearts.' "
Thirteen states and the District of Columbia now issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. No Southern state allows it, although the ACLU, Lambda Legal and other gay rights organizations sued this month to overturn Virginia's ban.
Polls show a slight majority of Americans now favor legalizing gay marriage. But that's not the case in the South, and certainly not in Tennessee. When Tennessee's constitutional amendment passed in 2006, even the state's top Democrats supported it, including then-Gov. Phil Bredesen and U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. An MTSU poll in March found 62 percent of Tennesseans remain opposed to legalizing same-sex marriage — even higher than the 56 percent measured in a 2012 Pew Center poll of Deep South states.
"This is one America. It's time for the freedom to marry to come to the South," Greg Nevins of Lambda Legal's Southern office said when the Virginia lawsuit was filed. "We do not want a country divided by unfairness and discrimination. Same-sex couples are in loving, committed relationships in every region of our nation and should be treated the same way, whether they live in Maine or Virginia."
Both sides say they expect this issue to return to the high court within the next several years.
Gay couples in Tennessee have no choice but to take their case to court because of the impossibility — at least in the foreseeable future — of advancing their rights in the legislature, where the Republican supermajority is a virtual captive of the Christian Right.
In 2011, when the Metro Council in heavily Democratic Nashville banned gay discrimination by companies doing business with the city, the legislature promptly voted to nullify that ordinance. Going a step further, state legislators forbade any city anywhere in Tennessee from ever adopting one like it.
This year, one bill would have abolished the entire Vanderbilt police force to punish the school for refusing to let student clubs discriminate against gays and lesbians. That was a little heavy-handed even for Tennessee, however, and the measure died after a couple of committee hearings. So did the latest iteration of Sen. Campfield's notorious "Don't Say Gay" proposal, which this time mandated that school personnel must refer students who seek counseling about LGBT issues to a medical professional, in essence outing them.
As you might imagine, the sudden new prospects of success for the so-called homosexual agenda are alarming to Tennessee's conservative Christians. The Tennessee Family Action Council's David Fowler — the state's leading conservative Christian lobbyist — is demanding that state officials defend traditional marriage.
Collegedale's vote was plainly illegal, Fowler says. He wants state Attorney General Bob Cooper to take some kind of legal action against the city to quash the new policy, pointing to Tennessee's constitutional amendment as all the evidence he needs. The amendment defines marriage as between a man and a woman. It also explicitly denies recognition to same-sex marriages legally performed elsewhere.
In addition — and most pertinently to Fowler's argument — it reads:
"Any policy or law or judicial interpretation, purporting to define marriage as anything other than the historical institution and legal contract between one man and one woman is contrary to the public policy of this state and shall be void and unenforceable in Tennessee."
As an entity of the state, Collegedale violated that provision of the amendment, Fowler says, by establishing a policy that recognizes same-sex marriage.
"The people approved a constitutional amendment that governs the situation," he says. "On its face, it appears Collegedale has ignored and flaunted that amendment. Presumably, the attorney general would be charged with bringing an action to enjoin this violation of the constitution."
Fowler might have a little trouble drumming up legislative support for that. His slapdown of Nashville over its nondiscrimination ordinance was easy, since Republicans love irritating Nashville's Democrats. But Republicans represent Collegedale in the legislature, and they probably won't care to bigfoot their own constituents.
Fowler also wants the state government to interject itself into a federal case making its way from Ohio to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The lower-court ruling requires Ohio to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where they are legal. If it's upheld on appeal, it would immediately become the law in Tennessee, because the 6th Circuit's jurisdiction includes this state.
If Attorney General Cooper won't file a brief defending Tennessee's gay marriage ban in that case, "then we'll know he supports same-sex marriage," Fowler says — and state lawmakers should hire their own lawyer to do it.
Cooper's office won't say what he'll do, only that he'll file a brief "if appropriate."
Gay rights activists insist their movement has turned the corner in Tennessee. They say they almost welcome opposition in the legislature because they think their opponents come across as mean-spirited bigots, and that helps draw attention to discrimination and unfairness in state law.
This session, the legislature adopted a resolution declaring Aug. 31 as "Traditional Marriage Day," and conservative Christians are holding rallies against same-sex marriage. Not to be outdone, gay rights supporters are throwing their own in-your-face rallies to celebrate what they're calling "Tennessee Marriage Equality Day." One event is scheduled for Public Square at the Metro Courthouse.
"There will still be horrible bills that pop up in the legislature. Some might even pass," the Tennessee Equality Project's Sanders says. "But in the end, local governments are moving in the right direction. Let the legislature do these things. That just brings another opportunity for a lawsuit. Not to be too cutesy about it, but I say, 'Bring it.' It just adds fuel to our cause."
But the small victory on benefits in Collegedale had a collateral cost: Kat Cooper's family was asked to leave their church home of 60 years. Ken Willis, the minister at Ridgedale Church of Christ, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the family must repent of their sins or exit the congregation. No matter that Cooper's family ties to the church run so deep, the paper reported, that she cleaned pews there as a girl, and a picture of her grandfather, a church elder, still hangs on the wall.
"The sin would be endorsing that lifestyle," Willis said.
Email editor@nashvillescene.com.
