Rhea County retreats from call to ban homosexuals
DAYTON (AP) — Commissioners reversed a two-day-old vote to ban homosexuals Thursday in the county where a jury 79 years ago convicted John Scopes of teaching evolution.
Rhea County attorney Gary Fritts said the commissioners unanimously rescinded their 8-0 Tuesday vote after it started a “wildfire” of public reaction. Fritts said the reaction, including threats against some commissioners, stemmed from a misunderstanding of the resolution they approved.
Following the Thursday vote that took about three minutes, the commissioners hastily left a courthouse meeting in a room filled with about 300 noisy spectators.
“I’ve never seen nothing like this,” Fritts said before deputies escorted the commissioners from a bank building across the street from the historic courthouse about 35 miles north of Chattanooga.
Despite some discussion during the Tuesday meeting about approving a resolution that would allow the county to charge homosexuals with crimes against nature, Fritts said that vote was intended to support Tennessee’s ban on same-sex marriages.
“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.”
Fritts said he advised the commissioners that they could not ban homosexuals or make them subject to criminal charges.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 struck down Texas’ sodomy laws as a violation of adults’ privacy.
Commissioner J.C. Fugate, whose motion to approve the resolution was approved Tuesday, declined comment Thursday as he left, as did the other commissioners.
Fugate also asked the county attorney Tuesday to find a way to “keep them out of here.”
The Tuesday vote was denounced by Matt Nevels, president of the Chattanooga chapter of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
During the Thursday meeting, social worker Esther Jackson, 24, of Dayton, held a sign bearing the message, “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.”
Twelve-year-old Caitlin Kinney, a seventh-grader, attended the meeting with her mother and said she opposes homosexuals living in the community.
Kinney said she supported the commissioners’ Tuesday vote.
“I think they should go further … try to see if they can ban them. It’s not a Christian thing,” she said.
The politically conservative county holds an annual festival commemorating the 1925 trial at which high school teacher John T. Scopes 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.