Tea Party Leads Effort to Rescind Benefits For Same-Sex Couples

Chattanooga - a city where ignorance and bigotry prevail

If one wants evidence that the Tea Party movement is really nothing more than a re-branded version of Christofascism look no farther than Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Tea Party elements led the effort to rescind  a city policy that granted benefits to domestic partners.  In addition to revealing the Christofascist/Tea Party fusion the reversal of the city's policy underscores why marriage is needed for same sex couples nationwide.   Meanwhile, Chattanooga has sent a clear message to modern, progressive businesses that it is not a place they should consider relocating to.  Here are excerpts from Think Progress:

Voters in Chattanooga, Tennessee overwhelmingly decided Thursday to undo a recently passed law that extended health benefits to the domestic partners of city employees. With a vote of 13,685-8,184, the town overturned the law originally passed 5-4 by the City Council.

Signatures to overturn the law had been collected by a local Tea Party group and a political action committee called Citizens for Government Accountability and Transparency (CGAT). According to CGAT, the law unfairly extended benefits to “unmarried girl friends” and “unmarried boy friends” and would hurt the city’s budget. “It sets a financial precedent that will be difficult for the city of Chattanooga taxpayers to sustain long term,” they claimed. “As healthcare cost increase, the creation of a new benefit class will jeopardize the long term future of married spouse benefits for all city employees.”

Despite this setback in Chattanooga, Tennessee’s elections did include some good news. State Sen. Stacey Campfield (R) lost his primary election to challenger Richard Briggs. Campfield had fiercely advocated for what infamously became known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would have prevented teachers from discussing homosexuality — thereby enabling anti-LGBT bullying and harassment — and forced school officials to out students to their parents. Campfield had compared homosexuality to injecting heroin and believed that AIDS originated in the gay community after somebody had sex with a monkey.

What is striking is how these "real Americans" decry the waning of America's position in the world when it is their chauvinism, rejection of modernity and embrace of ignorance that are driving the nation's decline.