Robin Lovett

Tennessee is not known for being a sex-positive state. Many school systems choose, in fact, to outsource their high school “sex ed” to vaguely religious abstinence-only programs like Just Wait. We were revealed as one of the most hostile states to LGBT students when state senator Stacey Campfield of Knoxville expressed his support of the infamous “Don’t Say Gay Bill,” a measure so outrageous that it was featured on The Colbert Report.

Campfield is a mainstay of local politics, making headlines for his belief that heterosexual sex doesn’t transmit AIDS and sponsoring a bill to cut welfare funding for families with kids who don’t perform well in school. Seriously. Little Denise doesn’t make the grade? You don’t eat this week. Campfield’s stance on guns combined with the conservative constituents he finds in East Tennessee have ensured his re-election, despite such antics as getting kicked out of a UT football game for refusing to remove a mexican wrestling match. Again, seriously.

Another player in the saga is Bill Dunn, a state representative also speaking for the City of Knoxville. All you really need to know about him is that he’s been in the house since 1994, he recently voted for a measure requiring abstinence-only sex education in Tennessee schools, another requiring that evolution be reserved a place in Tennessee classrooms, and another opposing the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The one that says, hey, states ...