{"id":1163,"date":"2014-08-14T20:08:22","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T01:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/?p=1163"},"modified":"2014-08-14T20:08:22","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T01:08:22","slug":"tennessee-same-sex-marriage-dont-say-gay-and-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/archives\/1163","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee: Same-Sex Marriage, Don’t Say Gay, and Benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Mack Freeman<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s been a busy week in Tennessee on the LGBT front. First, Chattanoooga voters overturned a domestic partners ordinance by a margin of about 20 points. The council had originally passed it 5-4 last year, but it was put on the ballot through a referendum process. Via Joe. My. God.:\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Following the vote Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said, \u201cI have no doubt Chattanoogans value fairness and equality, and I am proud of the volunteers who spent nights and weekends to ensure our employees are treated equally. The City of Chattanooga\u2019s non-discrimination ordinance was repealed tonight, but I want every City employee to know one thing — your work is valued and you are important to the future of our community. Regardless of the results tonight, my Administration will continue to hire and promote the best people who provide excellent service to our constituents.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, election night wasn’t all bad. State senator Stacey Campfield who rose to notoriety for introducing the “Don’t say gay” bill in that state lost in a primary <\/a>by 39 points.<\/p>\n

And then the big news this week is that the Roane County Circuit Court Judge found that that state’s same sex marriage ban was constitutional due to the lack of a significant federal question.<\/a> The ruling ignored the 2013\u00a0Windsor\u00a0<\/em>decision which paved the way for the recent spate of same sex marriage successes, instead relying on a 1972 case from Montana. This is the first time in 18 months that a same sex marriage case has been unsuccessful in American courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John Mack Freeman It’s been a busy week in Tennessee on the LGBT front. First, Chattanoooga voters overturned a domestic partners ordinance by a margin of about 20 points. The council had originally passed it 5-4 last year, but it was put on the ballot through a referendum process. Via Joe. My. God.:\u00a0 Following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":1164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carousel","category-glbt-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}