Bigotry, the new jobs plan.

Here in my home state of Tennessee we have a republican controlled house, a republican controlled senate, and a republican governor. When all of this came about in 2010 we were told by all of these republicans that they would focus on creating jobs for Tennesseans. So what have they done to get their fellow Tennesseans back to work? At first glance, nothing. But on closer inspection I think I have figured out how our law makers are trying to reduce unemployment in Tennessee.

There have been several bills introduced by our legislators that have received national attention. Last year my hometown of Nashville passed an ordinance stating that any company doing contract work for the city must have an anti-discrimination policy that includes gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons. The state legislator quickly responded by passing a law that made it illegal for a city or a county to institue any laws offering legal protections in the workplace for members of the LGBT community. They also tried to pass a bill making it illegal to even mention homosexuality in Tennessee schools from the 1st through the 9th grades. This bill passed the senate but failed in the house. Never fear it is being brought back for our members of the house to vote on again this session along with a bill to amend the state's anti-bullying statute so that you can verbally harass anyone you want as long as your religion says they are bad people.

Of course these pieces of legislation don't go far enough to reduce Tennessee's unemployment rate and so we have a newly introduced bill that will force transgender persons to use public restrooms that correlate to the gender listed on their birth certificates. Are you starting to see how Tennessee's elected officials are working to reduce unemployment?

First off we will gain numerous jobs by hiring the huge number of police officers we will need to check individuals birth certificates as they enter public restrooms. This will obviously help to bring down our unemployment rate. Above and beyond this you have to remember that the unemployment rate is stated as a percentage of the population. If you can lower your states population you should be able to reduce the unemployment rate as well. By instituting a series of laws that make it very obvious that the state of Tennessee hates the LGBT community, and if it wasn't for that pesky Lawrence v. Texas US Supreme Court ruling they would probably pass a law to throw us all in jail or string us up in public executions, they are hoping that all of the LGBTers out there will pack up and move out of the state. If you are gay and unemployed then your moving to another state will reduce the unemployment rate here. If you are transgender and currently employed your leaving the state will allow a good, God fearing straight person who is unemployed to fill your position further reducing our unemployment rate. What about people moving into Tennessee to fill all of these vacated jobs though? Well lets face it, when the rest of the country sees how crazy and bigoted and hateful we are in this state very few people will want to move here so we should be able to achieve a net gain in jobs.

I know, this all sounds a bit crazy, but our elected officials stated they were going to focus on job creation and so this is the only explanation I can come up with for their actions. Well I can come up with one other explanation but I won't say what it is. I mean my mother might wind up reading this.