LOOK MA, NO HANDS (SLIGHT RETURN)

Remember that proposed Tennessee bill that would ban teachers from talking about “sexual gateway activity”, potentially to include holding hands and smooching?

Well, it’s the law now.

The good news (such as it is) is that the final version of the bill reportedly doesn’t allow parents to sue teachers who mention such activities. They can, however, sue the hell out of sex ed instructors that are outside of the school system – like, say, Planned Parenthood:

[David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee] also pointed to a Planned Parenthood-organized program at a school in Knoxville, where students were directed to a web site "that actually lists as possible methods of birth control things like oral sex and anal sex play that I think most Tennesseans would find inappropriate."

By “most Tennesseans”, I assume he means “Me and the state government”. Which is close enough for them.

Anyway, everything I’ve said about it before (and what Stephen Colbert has said about it before) still applies.

Meanwhile, you may like to know that while Gov Bill Haslam was signing that one, he also managed to sign two other bills into law: one that makes getting an abortion harder by requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital in the county where they perform an abortion or in a neighboring county, and another where anyone who beats up a pregnant woman can be charged with assaulting her embryo (or murder if she miscarries).

See what they did there?

EXTRA CREDIT: For more on the admitting privileges issue, see this story about a similar law just passed in Mississippi and signed by Gov Phil Bryant, who has some interesting theories on what liberals think about all day.

Small govt, bitches!

Barefoot and pregnant,

This is dF