Tennessee City Violates Human Dignity By De-Facto Banning Queerness
Once again, bigoted interests use the concept of “indecency” to suppress Queer people & deny us the basic dignity of existence. Once again, we rail against that while chronicling the tactics involved.
Hello, friends,
Last week, we celebrated The Progressive Cafe reaching its first anniversary. Thank you all again so much for being here, and don’t hesitate to show your support by sharing, subscribing for free, and all that jazz.
This week it’s back to work as we join a growing chorus of dissent towards the City of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Journalist and fellow Substacker Erin Reed first identified how Murfressboro is using the concept of “public indecency” to silence Queer Voices. Tori Otten in The New Republic followed this reporting up and centered the relevant ordinances.
Sometimes when reporting on events you want to lead with specific legal clauses, and Otten did a fantastic job of that. Other times, when someone else has already landed the first couple of statements, it’s beneficial to track broader trends.
The ‘good’ news about these bad policies is that The Progressive Cafe has been doing that for some time. Let’s take a walk down memory lane and do something of a historiography on this tactic.
“Indecency” and “Protecting Children” As A Cudgel For Bigotry.
Let’s start with our article about the “Kids Online Safety Act,” a frighteningly bi-partisan push that would allow state Attorneys General to decide what was “safe” for children to access online. This is a bill which would essentially give states the power to censor the internet.
Some states have already experimented with requiring age verification to view pornography, which hasn’t gone un-noticed by our beloved smut-peddlers. KOSA would require similar age-gating for any website or article that discusses whatever the state AG decides is “harmful to children.”
Of course, all it takes is labeling anything Queer as “harmful to children” and you get the kind of information bans that states across the country have embraced. We’ve talked about how the Scholastic publishing company has had a fire lit under its rear end as it jostles its way through various state and local ordinances for its legendary book fairs.
These book fair issues prove it’s not just Queer folks who are facing silencing under regressive interests. We’ve talked previously about how various states are using the same argument of “harmful towards children” to censor history. “Could the Native American Genocide make the descendents of colonizers feel bad? It’s unsafe!” is the thought process here.
You might be wondering if these types of laws might have some kind of unintended blow-back. The truth is, regressives don’t care. Are you a lady who has breast cancer and needs to have a mastectomy? That might be hard to obtain if you’re confused for someone who is seeking gender affirmation surgery. The regressives know - and they don’t fucking care.
So How Do We Fight This?
First off, information is half the battle. As news of Murfreesboro’s maleficence spreads, it’s possible that its leadership will be shamed into changing its laws. There’s no guarantee that’ll happen, but it’d be the easiest way for this to be dealt with.
If they don’t, well, then we have to deal with the usual legal process for challenging a law. Here’s a simplistic breakdown from a non-legal-professional.:
First, someone has to have standing to sue. Usually that means someone has to be punished under an unjust law in order to be materially affected by that law.
Then a whole court case proceeds. This is an expensive process that could take years.
Finally, courts have to rule on it, and those first rulings might be appealed in order to see if a different judge might overturn earlier verdicts.
So:
A person has to commit an “indecent act,” then fight that charge in court. They have to have the resources to fight that battle. Then, the victim of the law has to convince a judge that the law is unconstitutional or otherwise unacceptable. It almost certainly is, but a radically regressive judge might rule against them anyway.
After all, we’re all too aware that judges get discretion over things like standing. In some cases, all you have to do is claim that you might possibly be asked to treat people equally and you’ll get a Supreme Court ruling in your favor!
(As an aside, a Florida ban on drag is currently having a rough time at the Supreme Court as we speak)
That Doesn’t Sound Great
It isn’t. People generally have to suffer under bad laws to get relief from them, especially when the whole point is to erase Queer people from existence. But it is the ultimate process towards getting that type of law made unacceptable.
So What Else Can Be Done?
The only other thing I can think of is that the people of Murfreesboro can, in the next election, vote in a legislative and executive body that would reverse these bad decisions. That’s letting Democracy take its time, which is fine if the people there can be convinced to vote that way. And depending on where one lives there’s clear evidence that this kind of targeting is unpopular.
Ultimately, however, it’s still ideal to have laws like that made unconstitutional throughout the country, if at all possible. That just requires the suffering and sacrifice of scofflaws.
But, hey! Maybe the Queer community there would be interested in a mass protest where they sit down and, well, I’ll leave that to your imagination other than to say it most assuredly won’t be ethically inappropriate, just legally-so.
In Other News
This week we return to In Other News, where we give brief updates on a number of topics. This week, we’ve got…
While we’ve talked about the War in Ukraine and the war in Israel/Palestine, consider that there’s also a vicious war taking place in Sudan. And there are probably others I’m not thinking of yet, but we’re praying for peace in all of them.
Democratic Texas Representative Joaquin Castro floated the idea of Congressional oversight with regards to Warner Bros essentially memory-holing a Road Runner cartoon, Coyote Vs Acme, the same fashion that it destroyed Batgirl and that other companies destroy other shows for tax write-offs.
A massive wave of geological activity in the Iceleandean area of Grindavik suggests that a volcanic explosion may be imminent. Significant enough volcanic activity can have impacts on climate change due to the additional particles eruptions throw in the air, on top of the difficulties faced by the thousands who have already been evacuated.
My own Representative George Santos apparently used donor money to pay for OnlyFans. So that’s cool.
In a glimmer of good news, in the midst of bilateral meetings between China and the U.S., it appears we’ll be getting more pandas! You know, assuming they’re treated well and are happy and healthy, yeah. Pandas, man.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.