Monday, January 30, 2012

TN Sen. Stacey Campfield, who helped kill Nashville's gay rights ordinance, gets kicked out of Knoxville's Bistro at the Bijou brunch for being a heterosexual supremacist

Martha Boggs as shown in 2010
Blue Streak post on the Bistro
Update: Now Campfield is claiming he's a victim of discrmination.
     Alert Knoxville blogger Sean Braisted, after seeing her Facebook post about the incident, broke the news that Martha Boggs, who runs Bistro at the Bijou, (on Gay Street!) in Knoxville, TN, sent homophobe extraordinaire and Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield packing when he showed up for brunch Sunday.
     Boggs evidently heard Campfield's ridiculous comments, sourced from Internet postings by right-wing cranks and discredited shrinks, on Sirius XM's Michelangelo Signorile Show.
     Boggs showed Campfield the door because of her deeply held personal belief that the legislator has gone from "stupid to dangerous." Today she told the Knoxville News-Sentinal that she  "didn't want his hate in my restaurant." Evidently, Campfield's attempts to backpedal didn't convince her that he is a nice guy.

Video: Martha Boggs explains why she asked Stacey Campfield to leave her restaurant.



     While Campfield is widely known as the Don't Say Gay senator, for his repeated attempts (and recent success in Tennessee's senate) to pass a bill muzzling any mention of homosexuality in that state's public schools, the fact is that his bill has not yet been passed by the Tennessee House. The bill has been widely mocked, even in the reddest of red states.
     Curiously, no one seems to mention Campfield's vote on Senate Bill 632, which, with its companion house bill, passed Tennessee's legislature and is now law. That measure voided Nashville's recently passed gay rights ordinance and prevents any community in Tennessee from passing similar legislation. You can see which Tennessee lawmakers voted for SB632 and HB600, banning gay rights ordinances statewide, here and here.
     Copycat legislation is pending in Nebraska.
     SB632/HB600, which enshrine the right to deny public accommodations because of sexual orientation, work both ways of course, and actually allowed Boggs to kick the presumably heterosexual Senator Campfield out of her establishment with impunity. (Careful what you wish and vote for, Senator Campfield!)
     Here was the vote:
SB632
Ayes: Mae Beavers, Mike Bell, Tim Barnes, Charlotte Burks, Stacey Campfield, Rusty Crowe, Mike Faulk, Dolores Gresham, Jack Johnson, Brian Kelsey, Bill Ketron, Randy McNally, Mark Norris, Doug Overby, Terry Roberts, Steve Southerland, Jim Summerville, Jim Tracy, Bo Watson, Ken Yager, Ron Ramsey
Noes: Andy Berke, Lowe Finney, Ophelia Ford, Thelma Harper, Joe Haynes, Beverly Marrero, Eric Stewart, Reginald Tate
Present and Not Voting: Doug Henry
Incidentally, Think Progress has researched and refuted the falsehoods articulated by Campfield on Signorile's Sirius XM show:
Campfield justified his comments by citing an advice column from 1988 and a Christian apologetics website.
     But the facts don’t back up Campfield’s vicious lies. Most women who have been infected with HIV were infected through heterosexual sex, many from their husbands or boyfriends. In 2007, women made up more than 60 percent of adults living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Global Council on Health reports that the male-to-female transmission of HIV is twice as likely as the female-to-male transmission. Not to mention the fact that his claim that gays and lesbians have shorter lifespans has already been thoroughly debunked.
     Campfield has a history of degrading the LGBT community. But his lies downplay the HIV risk that women face by trying to incorrectly make it only a gay issue.
     Campfield defended his outrageous comments, saying he was simply speaking “on the fly,” and that while he’s not an AIDS historian, “I’ve read and seen what other people have read and seen and those facts are out there.”

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