The Tennessee House on Monday approved
a bill that would repeal Nashville's newly-approved gay protections
ordinance.
The governing body of the City of
Nashville and Davidson County, which merged in 1963, narrowly
approved this month a plan to extend the city's gay protections to
contractors, joining more than 100 communities across the nation.
The 2009 law bans employment
discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity
(transgender protections).
Republican Representative Glen Casada's
measure would strip the state of all gay protections laws by
outlawing municipalities from enacting anti-discrimination ordinances
that go beyond state laws, which do not include gay protections.
House members approved the bill with a 73-24 vote.
Casada told NBC affiliate WSMV that a
different set of anti-discrimination laws on the state and local
level could hurt commerce.
But in a video in support of Casada's
bill produced by the Christian conservative Family Action Council of
Tennessee a gruff-looking man is seen following a young girl into a
playground restroom as a narrator asks, “Do gender differences
matter to you?” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this
page.)
“It's not any kind of statement that
those who are transgender or cross dress are sexual predators,” the
group's president, David Fowler, said in defending the ad. “It's
that sexual predators will know how to take advantage of those
opportunities afforded by law when the distinctions begin to get
blurred with respect [to] who's righfully or not in a restroom.”
A companion Senate bill awaits a vote
in committee.