DON’T WANT TO HIRE GAY PEOPLE? COME TO TENNESSEE, WHERE THERE ARE NO GAY PEOPLE

I’m a little behind on my bloggery due to deadlines and Real Life making unreasonable demands of me. Lucky for me, blogs aren’t time-sensitive.

Ha ha.

ITEM: The state of Tennessee (my home state, yo) makes it illegal for county/city govts to enact laws that prohibit businesses from discriminating against the LGBTs – and in the process strikes down a city-level anti-discrimination ordinance already in place in Metro Nashville.

Which I think will go down as one of the great WTF moments in Tennessee’s history.

Well, yes, I’m generally in favor of gay rights, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?

On the other hand, we’re talking about a Republican bill that basically says county and city govts can’t tell businesses they can't discriminate against The Gayz – only the state and federal govt can do that. And while existing federal and state anti-discrimination laws still apply, currently neither the federal govt nor the TN state govt explicitly prohibit private companies from discriminating against LGBT employees.

Which, of course, suits Gov Bill Haslam and the TN Repubs just fine, and that’s unlikely to change at the state level as long as they run the joint.

Which was why Metro Nashville extended anti-discrimination protections to the LGBTs in the first place. Which in turn is why Haslam signed this bill – because see, we can’t have cities making these kinds of decisions, because how can you possibly run a business if the regulations are different everywhere?

Small govt!

On the bright side, once Stacey Campbell gets his wish and no one’s allowed to even bring up the LGBTs in schools, the problem will fix itself because after a generation or two, no one will even know what the LGBTs are, making them impossible to discriminate against.

Progress!

Yr fired,

This is dF

LISTEN TO IT #32: NEW YORK KILLS ME

As some of you know, Gil Scott-Heron is gone.

Which is a shame – partly because of the debt that hip-hop owes to him, and partly because he’s the second person in this series this year to die shortly after releasing a comeback album (the first being Poly Styrene).

Scott-Heron released I’m New Here last year, his first album since 1994. It never made it to the racks here in HK, so I’ve only heard the tracks that are on the YouTubes. Like this one here:

I like them. It’s not quite as essential as classics like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” or even “Whitey On The Moon”. But when yr early work is as seminal as GSH’s was, it’s always hard to live up to yr own past.

Anyway, I’ve been a fan since finding out who he was in the mid-90s (via college radio, of course), so it’s good that he was able to record one more quality album – especially after having put himself through so much in the last 16 years with drug abuse, jail terms and HIV.

Respect.

Commercial-free,

This is dF

CABBAGE ROLLS OF THE GODS

They’re Thor-rrific, apparently.



[Via Crypt Of Wrestling]


Verily,

This is dF