Who’s No. 1? Eat our dust, Florida and Texas

After inflicting three pretty terrible presidents on our young republic during its first century, the Volunteer State settled into its role as a political bridesmaid. Sorry Jacksonians, Johnsonians and any J.K. Polk fans walking around out there, but you don’t need me to remind you of all the ways your guys sucked; and let’s don’t even get started on Al Gore Jr., who tried to talk us into believing that climate change was real and assault weapons were bad.

But that’s the past. 2023 is the year that the Republican-owned 113th Tennessee General Assembly lifted us out of obscurity and turned three Democratic state House members into rock stars by attempting to pitch them out of office. And although the House took the lead in getting us noticed, Senate Speaker Randy McNally did his part by striking up an online relationship with a sassy crossdresser who likes to post selfies of himself in his underpants.

But our legislators are much more than just an assembly of April Fool jokes and a source of inspiration for Saturday Night Live skits. They are plenty smart enough to have crammed some astonishing legislation down our throats during this year’s scant three-month session, and they were smart enough to leave town early to spare us further embarrassment. What they left behind is a mess of such bad laws that it’s tough to single out the most outstanding ones. Here are just a few:

How about their “repair” work on the state’s abortion ban, which was triggered by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last year. There were no exceptions to the trigger law, only something called an “affirmative defense” which allowed doctors to plead that they had performed an abortion out of medical necessity – at trial, after arrest and likely losing their right to practice medicine. The new law carves out exceptions to save the life/health of the mother, although the state’s leading anti-abortion lobbyist is bragging that nothing has really changed.

There’s the landlord/tenant law that requires an evicted renter to come up with a year’s worth of rent before they can appeal their eviction. This underpublicized doozy deserves more attention in these days of soaring housing costs.

We’ve got an Orwellian “divisive concepts” law that encourages college students to report their professors for talking about things that hurt their feelings, like suggesting their ancestors might have been racists or saying that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War or maybe calling AR-15s weapons of war. It got cited at last week’s school board meeting by an opponent of the Freedom School, which serves elementary students and includes books like “the 1619 Project” on its reading list.

And thank heavens the boys in Nashville are keeping us safe from drag queens. No need to elaborate, except to say that this anti-drag law has spawned an entertaining new generation of cross-dressing musical outlaws and allowed us to discover that James McMurtry has really good legs. His daddy’d be proud.

The anti-drag law should not be confused with anti-transgender laws prohibiting medical clinics from prescribing “gender affirming” treatment for minors. Letting people like Cameron Sexton and that senator/doctor from Hohenwald who’s been in trouble for handing out opioids to relatives including his nurse/cousin/girlfriend make these decisions instead of parents and doctors has to be a big relief for kids who already clock the highest suicide rates in the general population.

And speaking of stressing out kids, how about the third-grade retention law that’s terrorizing 9-year-olds from Memphis to Mountain City who are waiting to find out how they did on their TCAP tests. If they failed to perform at grade-level, they’ll be offered a confusing menu of options and/or consequences, the most feared of which is being forced to repeat the third grade. I saw a heart-breaking Facebook post from a parent whose child is threatening suicide if she has to repeat third grade.

Proponents of this law will tell you that it’s a necessary measure because only about a third of students are proficient in reading at the end of their third-grade year. Opponents will tell you that this is a cynical government gambit to inflate the state’s educational ranking by preventing poor performers from participating in the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests on which the “National Report Card” scores are based. Our governor and legislators wouldn’t put nine-year-olds into a pressure cooker just to move Tennessee up in the national educational rankings, would they?

The verdict isn’t yet in on gun laws, but don’t count on Gov. Bill Lee’s belated plan to call a special legislative session to consider a weak tea “order of protection” to keep guns out of the hands of bad actors. He’s trying hard not to call it a Red Flag Law but is meeting with a cool response from lawmakers who are captives of the gun lobby. Expect to hear lots of talk about mental health from the guys who refuse to fund any meaningful mental health initiatives for their constituents.

Finally, there’s the “pronoun bill,” which says teachers don’t have to refer to kids by their preferred pronouns if they don’t match up to the students’ biological sex.

I could make this list longer, but it seems like plenty enough to support my claim that our legislature is right down there with Texas and Florida as the most authoritarian in the country. I could go on, but I’m going to stop before I need to seek services for myself. So, take that, Florida and Texas. No. 1 is still for Tennessee.

Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.