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‘Don’t Say Gay’ Senator Kills Funding For Sex Education At University Of Tennessee

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Stacey Campfield has succeeded in forcing the University of Tennessee to pull funding for a planned sex education week. The state senator known for his homophobia, ignorance surrounding sex and gender issues, and annual attempts to pass an ever-expanding “Don’t Say Gay” bill, was not pleased with the university’s plans to use tax dollars and student fees to educate students, and went so far as to claim college students aren’t adults.

Campfield is also known for claiming, shockingly, that it’s “virtually impossible” to contract HIV via heterosexual sex.

READ: New ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Forces Teachers To Tell Gay Kids They Need A Psychiatrist

Although scheduled to begin April 7, “Chancellor Jimmy Cheek announced the school would remove state tax money from the Sex Week budget — two-thirds of the total, or $11,145, according to the Daily Beacon,” the Huffington Post reported:

University of Tennessee President Joe DiPietro told the Daily Beacon “Some activities planned as part of Sex Week are not an appropriate use of state tax dollars.”

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Campfield said he still wasn’t pleased that $6,500 in student fees were funding Sex Week.

“It’s the same as tuition dollars, because the students cannot opt out,” Campfield said.

Campfield pushed back against the argument that the students attending these events are adults. “There’s no age requirement to go to college,” Campfield said.

The goal is to “advocate for a comprehensive understanding of sex and sexuality and cultivate dialogue on these topics,” and will include a workshop on preventing sexual assaults, tips to practice safe sex and free HIV testing.

That last part clearly must have gotten Senator Campfield’s goat.

Of course conservatives like Todd Starnes focused on the less conventional aspects of the sex education week.

University of Tennessee uses Student Fees to pay for Lesbian Bondage Expert,” Starnes wrote.

The Fox News pundit certainly had no problem when it was the RNC paying for lesbian bondage events — and the  “lesbian bondage expert’s” role in the sex education week was to read poetry — but no one ever accused conservatives of being fair and promoting education. At least, not today’s conservatives.

Fortunately, it looks like despite attempts by Senator “Don’t Say Gay” to become Senator “Don’t Say Sex,” the students at the University of Tennessee has the upper hand. The event will continue, thanks to fundraising efforts and private donations.

Some of the events include:

First Friday, “Loud and Queer”

Golden Condom Scavenger Hunt

How to Talk to Your Parents About Sex

Free HIV Testing

Sex Ed That Just Can’t Wait

Religion and Sexuality

Transgender Sexuality 101

How to Talk to Your Doctor about Sex

and one that surely was created especially for the good state senator:

Sex Positivity in our Sex-Negative Culture

 

Image via Sex Week website

 

Related:

Tennessee GOP’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Opposed By Majority Of Tennessee Voters

GOP Lawmaker Who Calls Gays Not ‘Mentally Healthy’ Introduces New ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill

‘Don’t Say Gay’ Senator Explains HIV Prevalence In Africa: They’re Really Into Sodomy

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Tennessee Governor Slammed After ‘Praying’ for Nashville School Community Without Mentioning Mass Shooting

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Governor Bill Lee quickly drew tremendous outrage in the wake of a school mass shooting where six people including three young children were shot to death. Social media users criticized the Tennessee Republican, who had signed a permit-less gun carry law, for declaring he was “praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community,” without posting any mention of the mass shooting.

Tweeting he was “closely monitoring the tragic situation at Covenant,” Gov. Lee said, “As we continue to respond, please join us in praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community.”

There was no mention of any loss of life, and, as Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts passionately noted, the “situation” was a mass shooting.

“If thoughts and prayers alone worked to stop gun violence, there wouldn’t have been a shooting at a Christian elementary school. It’s your actions – including weakening the state’s gun laws – that’s killing kids in Tennessee,” Watts also tweeted. “SHAME ON YOU.”

Gov. Lee signed a permit-less carry bill into law in 2021, at a Beretta gun manufacturing plant.

According to the CDC, as of 2020 – one year before the permit-less carry bill was signed into law – Tennessee ranked tenth in the nation in per-capita firearm mortality.

READ MORE: ‘Our Children Deserve Better’: First Lady Jill Biden Speaks Out After Six Die in Nashville School Mass Shooting

Meanwhile, others took notice of the gun culture Gov. Lee has fostered in “The Volunteer State.”

MSNBC analyst and Bulwark writer Tim Miller commented, “Tennessee governor Bill Lee issued a statement recently about how the drag ban in Tennessee ‘protects children.’ If only he would have instead focused on laws that might have prevented the mass murder of children in his state today.”

Historian Kevin Kruse pointed to an article from last year, after the Uvalde, Texas school shooting, titled: “Rep. Clemmons Seeks Renewed Gun Laws, Gov. Lee Requests Prayer.”

“You chose prayer over gun reforms last year after the Uvalde massacre,” Kruse wrote. “And now here we are.”

The progressive website Tennessee Holler pointed out that Gov. Lee, along with GOP lawmakers, “just appointed Jordan Mollenhour to the [state] board of education— whose company was sued for selling ammo to an underage mass killer (SANTA FE) and sold ammo to at least one more (AURORA) He has ZERO education experience.”

Let’s Give a Damn founder Nick Laparra tweeted, “We are 86 days into 2023. So far, 9859 people have died by gun violence and there have been 128 mass shootings. Meanwhile, @GovBillLee spends his days being outraged over drag queens and CRT and book bans. This is Bill Lee’s and the GOP’s fault.”

See the tweets and video above or at this link.

READ MORE: New WSJ Poll Is Devastating for DeSantis and His ‘Anti-Woke’ Policies

 

 

 

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Mystery Grand Jury Witness in Trump Hush Money Probe Is Former ‘Enquirer’ Publisher and Trump Ally

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Avid followers of the Manhattan District Attorney’s moves noted the grand jury had been called into service for Monday, and soon news leaked that yet another witness would be testifying in the probe into Donald Trump’s alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.

Monday afternoon, NBC News’ Garrett Haake reported live on MSNBC that the mystery witness was David Pecker, the former tabloid publisher of the “National Enquirer,” who reportedly had been looking for stories in 2016 to protect Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Haake notes Monday was Pecker’s second appearance before the grand jury in the hush money case.

The New York Times also reported David Pecker as the grand jury witness, calling Pecker “a key player in the hush-money matter. He and the tabloid’s top editor helped broker the deal between the porn star, Stormy Daniels, and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time.”

READ MORE: ‘Our Children Deserve Better’: First Lady Jill Biden Speaks Out After Six Die in Nashville School Mass Shooting

“While the focus of Mr. Pecker’s testimony is unclear, he could provide valuable information for prosecutors. A longtime ally of Mr. Trump, he agreed to keep an eye out for potentially damaging stories about Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign,” The Times reports. “For a brief time in October 2016, Ms. Daniels appeared to have just that kind of story. Her agent and lawyer discussed the possibility of selling exclusive rights to her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump to The National Enquirer, which would then promise to never publish it, a practice known as ‘catch and kill.'”

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman weighed in, noting, “nothing about that decision [to have Pecker testify] suggests any change of heart on Bragg’s part to indict Trump.”

Former Dept. of Defense Special Counsel Ryan Goodman, an NYU professor of law, notes that Pecker’s “testimony can show the [hush money] scheme was designed to affect outcome of election.”

“He reportedly communicated directly with Trump on payment,” Goodman adds.

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‘Our Children Deserve Better’: First Lady Jill Biden Speaks Out After Six Die in Nashville School Mass Shooting

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First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, speaking Monday afternoon at a National League of Cities conference, told attendees, “Our children deserve better,” as she broke the news of the Nashville school mass shooting at Covenant Presbyterian School where three children and three adults were shot dead.

“You know,” Dr. Biden, herself an educator and clearly pained by the news, began her remarks by saying, “I hate to say what I’m gonna say next because you know you’re so enthusiastic and with so much energy and hope and I feel it.”

“But while you’ve been in this room, I don’t know whether you’ve been on your phones but we just learned about another shooting in Tennessee, a school shooting and I am truly without words and our children deserve better, and we stand – all of us – we stand with Nashville in prayer.”

READ MORE: New WSJ Poll Is Devastating for DeSantis and His ‘Anti-Woke’ Policies

The First Lady, a former public high school English teacher and currently a professor of English at a community college, was speaking at the organization’s Congressional City Conference.

Watch Dr. Biden below or at this link.

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