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Breaking: TN Lawmakers Pass Religious Freedom Bill Allowing Therapists to Refuse LGBT People Service

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Bill Allows Therapists and Counselors to Refuse Service to Anyone Based on Their ‘Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs’

Tennessee state lawmakers Wednesday afternoon passed a bill that would allow mental health professionals to refuse service to anyone based on the “sincerely held religious belief of the counselor or therapist.” The bill just passed the House by a huge margin, 68-22, and earlier passed the Senate, 27-5. HB 1840 now heads to GOP Gov. Bill Haslam for his signature or veto.

The legislation is particularly onerous for LGBT people in Tennessee. Of its 6.5 million residents overall, nearly one-quarter live in rural areas, where access to mental health professionals can be especially limited. While the bill states a therapist must provide a referral if they refuse service, it’s not only possible, but likely, another therapist willing to help an LGBT person could be hours away.

The ACLU of Tennessee warns the bill, should it become law, would allow counselors to “refuse to see clients for almost unlimited reasons. For instance, a counselor could refuse to see a lesbian simply because of her sexual orientation, or to see a couple involved in an interfaith relationship. A counselor who is an atheist could refuse to see a Catholic client—and the list goes on.”

“For people seeking counseling because they are faced with a critical dilemma in their lives and need objective guidance, allowing mental health professionals to discriminate could cause grave damage. Many who need care already face significant barriers, including trauma, marginalization, and a historic distrust of mental health providers. For some—like a woman who wants to escape her abusive spouse or a gay teen being bullied, for example—this bill could affect their very survival.”

The bill is exceptionally broad, and even includes unlicensed counselors. It also uses undefined language and sweeping language, like this passage: “facilitate normal human growth and development, using a combination of mental health and human development principles, methods, and techniques, to achieve mental, emotional, physical, social, moral, educational, spiritual, or career development and adjustment throughout the life span.”

The Tennessee Equality Project has a petition asking Gov. Haslam to veto the bill. 

Some responses via Twitter:

Earlier this week Tennessee lawmakers sent Gov. Haslam a bill making the Christian Holy Bible the official state book. 

UPDATE:
The Tennessee Equality Project, via email, adds: 

Opposed by over 50 Tennessee clergy, the bill does not represent the religious freedom it purports to protect.

An anti-bullying amendment that would have protected minors who are victims of bullying was stripped from the bill during a House Health Committee meeting.

 

Image via Wikimedia

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News

‘Misogynistic’: JD Vance’s ‘Creepy’ Views on the ‘Purpose of the Postmenopausal Female’

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August 14, 2024

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Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance in 2020 agreed with a podcast host who told him grandmothers helping to raise children is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.” Vance had not yet been elected to the U.S. Senate at the time. The venture capitalist turned Ohio Republican politician also agreed with the host who said having an in-law who would raise his children was a “weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.”

Vance in 2020 was working at his venture capital startup funded in part by billionaire Peter Thiel. Usha Vance, his wife, was a civil litigation attorney after having clerked for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh (who later became Justice Brett Kavanaugh,) and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

“My wife had this baby seven weeks before she started the clerkship, still not sleeping any more than an hour and a half in a given interval, and her mom just took a sabbatical,” explained Vance, not stating that the child was his. “She’s a biology professor in California, just took a sabbatical for a year and came and lived with us and took care of our kid for a year.”

READ MORE: ‘Underestimating Harris’: Former Bush Strategist Warns Polls Off as Enthusiasm ‘Skyrockets’

“Painfully economically inefficient,” Vance continued, according to audio published Wednesday by Heartland Signal (below). “Why didn’t she just keep her job, give us part of the wages to pay somebody else to do it, right? Because that is the thing that the hyper-liberalized economics wants you to do.”

Vance currently has a net worth of about $4 million according to Business Insider. It’s unclear why he would have needed financial assistance from his mother-in-law as a billionaire-backed venture capitalist four years ago.

Some critics are suggesting Vance’s remarks are yet more evidence of his misogyny, after his now-infamous “childless cat ladies” comment.

“No,” remarked Lincoln Project co-founder Jennifer Horn, a former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “My primary purpose as a postmenopausal woman is to highlight the chauvanistic, misogynistic, ugly, ignorant, arrogant, destructive nature of the GOP ticket.”

Allison Gill, the award-winning host of the “Mueller, She Wrote” podcast commented, “Vance says the only thing postmenopausal women are good for is helping raise grandkids. Well, this postmenopausal woman is good for kicking your ass in November.”

READ MORE: White Born Again Christian Evangelicals Could Sway Election to Harris Warns CBN’s Brody

Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe expert Olga Lautman asked, “What is @JDVance carrying on about? This is plain bizarre. Post-menopausal women? Only Indian grandparents help raise kids? What?”

Indivisible co-executive director Leah Greenberg added, “the true genuis of JD Vance is that he takes sentiments that *could* be totally normal, like “intergenerational caregiving is good,” and somehow makes them incredibly creepy.”

Listen to Vance’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: Florida in Play for Harris? Election Could Hinge on ‘Inactive’ Sunshine State Dem Voters

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News

‘Underestimating Harris’: Former Bush Strategist Warns Polls Off as Enthusiasm ‘Skyrockets’

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6 hours ago

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August 14, 2024

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The Bush 2004 re-election chief strategist says current polling, which shows Vice President Kamala Harris beating Donald Trump nationally including in all but one of seven swing states, is still underestimating the public’s support for the Democratic presidential nominee as enthusiasm for the Harris-Walz ticket is spiking across the country.

Former Republican Matthew Dowd, now a Democrat, on Wednesday wrote, “my sense from watching politics/polls for the last 40 years is many of the polls right now are underestimating Harris support. And this is because they haven’t adjusted the models to take into account Democratic enthusiasm and Dems being larger share of vote than a month ago.”

The Cook Political Report last week announced it had moved its current predictions in three swing states toward Democrats, but still in the “toss up” category. Cook Political’s senior editor and elections analyst Dave Wasserman writes the “latest battleground polls show Harris erasing Trump’s leads.”

READ MORE: White Born Again Christian Evangelicals Could Sway Election to Harris Warns CBN’s Brody

Dowd suggests those too are off, adding, “much has changed in last two weeks, all to the positive for Harris.”

He writes, “one thing to keep in mind with latest Cook Political report swing state polls, they are a lagging indicator of where race is. Polls came out of field on august 2nd, 12 days ago. so releasing them today is kind of a waste of time since they estimate where race was two weeks ago.”

Despite Dowd’s caution the Monmouth University poll taken August 8-12 shows a massive spike in Democratic voter enthusiasm. From June to August Democratic voters’ enthusiasm went from 46% to 85%, while Republican voter enthusiasm over the same time period stayed flat at 71%.

READ MORE: Florida in Play for Harris? Election Could Hinge on ‘Inactive’ Sunshine State Dem Voters

“Harris has higher favorability ratings than either Trump or Biden, which means there has been in a decline in the number of double haters, that is voters who dislike both nominees,” the Monmouth University poll notes. “Harris also has a clear advantage over Trump in being seen as having the necessary stamina for the job and matches or slightly edges her Republican opponent on understanding people’s concerns, representing American values, and bringing about change.”

READ MORE: Trump’s ‘Venezuela’ Invitation to Musk Raises ‘Flight Risk’ Fears Among Legal Experts

 

Image via Shutterstock

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White Born Again Christian Evangelicals Could Sway Election to Harris Warns CBN’s Brody

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9 hours ago

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August 14, 2024

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Evangelicals For Harris, one of the new grassroots groups popping up across the nation holding calls to support and raise funds for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential run is out with a hard-hitting ad, raising a warning from a veteran religious broadcaster that if 20% of white born again Christian evangelicals vote Democratic in the November presidential election, Trump will likely lose.

Christian Broadcasting Network’s pro-Trump David Brody, who is also an on-air personality for the far-right streaming website Real America’s Voice, says the Evangelicals For Harris video is part of their “effort to win over some of those ‘on-the-fence’ Conservative Evangelicals in swing states who are lukewarm when it comes to Donald Trump.”

“Specifically and most interestingly,” Brody notes, “Evangelicals For Harris will be targeting conservative Christian media websites. This is NOT just a play for liberal Christians. The group already has over 200,000 Evangelical Christians who have signed a pledge to volunteer and vote for the Harris/Walz ticket.”

“Big Zoom call tonight FYI. They ain’t playin’,” he warns, acknowledging the group’s posted call.

READ MORE: ‘Stale and Unsubstantiated’: Trump’s Recusal Motion Denied in Scathing Rebuke

“Look, here’s a reality check. Donald Trump will get a HEFTY MAJORITY of the conservative evangelical vote. That’s a no-brainer but if you think an effort like this is laughable and a waste of time, you’re missing the larger political point. Elections are typically won at the margins, especially in the seven key swing states and so with that in mind, consider this. In 2008, Barack Obama received 26% of the White Born Again Evangelical Vote and WON. In 2016, Hillary Clinton received 16% of the White Born Again Evangelical Vote and LOST. In 2020, Joe Biden received 24% of the White Born Again Evangelical Vote and WON.”

“If Kamala Harris gets 20% or more of the White Born Again Evangelical Vote (not out of the question), Trump will probably lose.”

The ad (below) opens with an old clip of the late Reverend Billy Graham, the iconic evangelical Christian and Democrat whose views were far more liberal than his far-right son Franklin Graham.

“Have you been to the cross and said, ‘Lord, I have sinned, I’m sorry for my sin, I’m willing to change my way of life?” Rev. Graham asks.

It segues to a conversation between Donald Trump and Republican pollster Frank Luntz at a 2015 event, the far-right Family Leadership Summit.

“Have you ever asked God for forgiveness?” Luntz asks Trump.

“That’s a tough question,” was Trump’s immediate response. “I’m not sure I have.”

“I don’t bring God into that picture,” Trump adds. “I don’t.”

READ MORE: Florida in Play for Harris? Election Could Hinge on ‘Inactive’ Sunshine State Dem Voters

The ad closes with on-screen text that asks: “Is there any greater denial of Christ… than to say, ‘I do not need his forgiveness?'”

Former CNN commentator Keith Boykin posted the video and wrote: “New Evangelicals for Harris ad hits Trump. MAGA evangelicals may want to consider how an unrepentant, adulterous, convicted felon, and adjudicated rapist in a gold-plated penthouse reflects the values of a Jesus who told us to help the poor and the needy.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: Arizona Latest Battleground State to Be in Play as Abortion Access Gets Put on the Ballot

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