County changes voting process after effort to ban gays
DAYTON (AP) — Five weeks after county commissioners voted to outlaw homosexuality and then changed their minds, describing the vote as a verbal misunderstanding, they decided Tuesday to put all such statements in writing before taking any vote.
Unlike the March 18 reversal that attracted a raucous, divided crowd of about 300 spectators to the Rhea County Courthouse best known as the site of the 1925 Scopes monkey trial, about 25 people turned out Tuesday for a quiet meeting that included the rule change.
Commission Chairman Terry Broyles, who opened the meeting with a request for everyone to “respect everyone else’s opinion,” sat with seven other commissioners as one constituent described their ban on gays as “stupid,” another demanded their resignations and another commended their action, saying it is supported by the Bible.
Broyles declined to say if requiring written motions before votes stemmed from the uproar over the vote to ban gays.
“It’s just a clarification … an effort to do things better,” Broyles said.
Broyles said commissioners want to put the “unfortunate situation” behind them.
Commissioner J.C. Fugate, whose verbal motion to ban homosexuals from Rhea County and “if they are caught living together as such — that they be tried for crimes against nature,” declined comment Tuesday.
The March 16 ban was denounced by Matt Nevels, president of the Chattanooga chapter of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
That vote and the reversal have since prompted plans for a May 8 gay pride event at a public park in the city.
Dayton, about 35 miles north of Chattanooga, annually commemorates the 1925 trial at which John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution at the public high school. The verdict was reversed on a technicality and the trial became the subject of the play and movie “Inherit the Wind.”