Update:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...022EST0573.DTL
Tennessee county reverses ban on gays; attorney says intent was to back same-sex marriage ban
BILL POOVEY, Associated Press Writer
Friday, March 19, 2004
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(03-19) 07:22 PST DAYTON, Tenn. (AP) --
Commissioners in rural, conservative Rhea County never intended to create the "wildfire" of reaction that resulted from banning gay people, the county attorney said after the board reversed its 2-day-old decision.
The original vote was meant to show support for the state's ban on same-sex marriages, county Attorney Gary Fritts said Thursday.
"They wanted to send a message to our (state) representative and senator that Rhea County supports the ban on same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage is what it was all about," Fritts said. "There has just been so much misunderstanding about this. It was to stop people from coming here and getting married and living in Rhea County."
The board voted 8-0 Thursday to rescind its Tuesday action. The commissioners declined to comment as deputies escorted them to and from the meeting, where they overturned the earlier vote and quickly adjourned.
Fritts said he advised the commissioners that they could not ban homosexuals or make them subject to criminal charges. The U.S. Supreme Court last year struck down laws on homosexual sodomy as a violation of adults' privacy.
Commissioner J.C. Fugate, whose initiated the Tuesday motion, also made the motion to rescind it Thursday. In a discussion about gays and same-sex marriage at the earlier meeting, Fugate had asked the county attorney to find a way to "keep them out of here."
Twelve-year-old Caitlin Kinney and others in a noisy crowd at the courthouse Thursday night were disappointed at the reversal.
The seventh-grader said she doesn't want homosexuals in the community. "It's not a Christian thing," said Kinney, identifying herself as a Baptist.
"I've never seen nothing like this," Fritts said at the historic courthouse where a jury 79 years ago convicted John Scopes for teaching evolution.
During the Thursday meeting, social worker Esther Jackson, 24, held a sign saying, "Breed Love, Not Hate."
"I'm just making a statement that I don't think it's right," Jackson said of the Tuesday vote. "It's just ignorance, is all."
The county about 35 miles north of Chattanooga annually commemorates the 1925 trial at which Scopes, a high school teacher, was convicted of teaching evolution. The verdict was reversed on a technicality, and the trial became the subject of the play and movie "Inherit the Wind."
In 2002, a federal judge struck down the teaching of a Bible class in Rhea County's public schools.
Fritts said he doesn't believe the issue will come up again with the commissioners.
"I think they got all the publicity they need about it," he said.
I don't get it. I mean, why did they fuck with the formula? Where are the car songs? There's only one song about surfing and it's a downer!
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