Tennessee Passes Therapist Religious Freedom Bill, Confirms Gay People are Gross
Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee has signed a bill that allows therapists and counselors to refuse to provide their services to patients whose “goals, outcomes or behaviors” conflict with their “sincerely held principles.” The bill, which has been criticized by the American Counselors Association and multiple civil liberties groups, comes on the heels of other pieces of legislation passed by the Tennessee General Assembly, including a bill that would make alleged victims of sexual harassment pay the defendant’s legal fees if they lose the case, and another that would establish the Bible as the official state book.
When asked to comment on the legislature’s plans for addressing the fact that the state has the fourth highest violent crime rate in the nation, a capitol plagued by an affordable housing crisis, and is tied for second in diabetes and in the top ten for deaths from drug use, cancer, and cardiovascular disease, Majority Whip Cameron Sexton released the following statement:
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Personally, I’m glad that the Volunteer State continues to spend taxpayer money discussing and legislating these sorts of important social issues. Without Tennessee being the first state in the union to make it legal to say no to providing mental healthcare to LGBT people, therapists might have actually had to act with compassion on their fellow human beings, and we certainly can’t have that in a state with over twenty-eight thousand homeless children and 370,000 more children living in poverty.
However, I must admit that I am disappointed that the law specifically doesn’t apply if the gay person is “in imminent danger of harming themselves or others.” I thought this law was chiefly about religious liberty, a bedrock principle of our nation. Instead, the provision dictates that religious liberty only matters to a point. If a gay person comes into a therapist’s office and they’re talking about killing themselves, that shouldn’t change the fact that gay people are icky and gross and don’t deserve mental health care because of their sin.
Regardless, I applaud Governor Haslam for having the courage to stand up to LGBT people with mental illnesses. Christian businesses everywhere deserve to have the right to refuse to serve people for religious reasons, just like Jesus did with all of those filthy lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors. Soon, Christian therapists will be turning away anyone going through a divorce, struggling with addiction, recovering from having an abortion, and who believes in raising taxes or universal healthcare.
And to all the gay people reading this, take heart: according to the Family Action Council of Tennessee, or FACT, this bill “would actually protect a gay or lesbian counselor who was faced with counseling a client that wanted a counselor to assure them that their views against a same-sex “marriage” [sic] entered into by the client’s child were okay.”
I don’t know what any of that actually means, but I’m sure it’ll be a great consolation during your next depressive episode.
