Tag Archives: Stacey Campfield

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Tenn. senator wants schools to notify parents of ‘homosexual’ activity

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A Republican lawmaker is proposing legislation that would require schools to inform a student’s parents if the child is engaging in “homosexual” activity.

Under the measure sponsored by state Sen. Stacey Campfield of Knoxville, a school counselor, nurse or principal can inform parents if their children’s “circumstances present immediate and urgent safety issues involving human sexuality.”

Campfield told reporters on that he considers the “act of homosexuality” to be dangerous to a child’s health and safety.

The measure is part of a proposal, known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, that Campfield passed in the Senate in 2011, but the companion bill failed in the House last year.

The proposal would ban the teaching of gay issues to elementary and middle school students.

Campfield says the current legislation has a House sponsor and he’s optimistic about its passage.

Last year, in a radio interview discussing his anti-gay campaign, Campfield said HIV and AIDS originated from a man having sex with a monkey and that “it is virtually … impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.”

That remark prompted him to be ejected from a popular brunch bistro in Knoxville.

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Tennessee pol ousted from restaurant over AIDS comment

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A Tennessee Republican lawmaker was ousted from a Knoxville restaurant over comments he made on a satellite radio show about the origins of AIDS and how it’s transmitted.

Tennessee Sen. Stacey Campfield of Knoxville was interviewed late last week by Michelangelo Signorile, editor-at-large of Huffington Gay Voices, on Signorile’s radio show on SiriusXM’s LGBT channel, OutQ, according to The Knoxville News Sentinel.

Campfield told the newspaper that some of his comments were taken “out of context” in the story.

He added: “I’m not a historian on AIDS … but I’ve read and seen what other people have read and seen and those facts are out there.”

The subject of the radio interview was a proposal by Campfield, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would ban public schools from teaching about gay issues.

During the discussion, Campfield said HIV and AIDS originated from a man having sex with a monkey and that “it is virtually … impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.”

In a Huffington Post story on the interview, Signorile describes Campfield as “comparing homosexuality to bestiality and making what public health officials would characterize as recklessly false assertions about AIDS.”

This afternoon HP reported that the owner of The Bistro at the Bijou in Knoxville asked Campfield to leave the restaurant over the weekend. “I hope that Stacy (sic) Campfield now knows what it feels like to be unfairly discriminated against,” restaurant owner Martha Boggs wrote on her Facebook page.

Later she said, “I didn’t want his hate in my restaurant.”

The Senate version of Campfield’s legislation passed last year. The companion has been delayed in a House subcommittee.

The measure limits all sexually related instruction to “natural human reproduction science” in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Campfield said it’s needed in part because homosexuality is more dangerous than heterosexuality and “there are people who want to glorify risky behavior in schools.”

Opponents of the legislation fear it would prevent teachers and others from speaking out against the bullying of gay teens.

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Tenn. advances ‘don’t say gay’ bill

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A committee of the Tennessee Senate has approved a bill to prohibit teachers from discussing homosexuality in kindergarten through eighth-grade classrooms.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Stacey Campfield (pictured) , R-Knoxville, unsuccessfully pushed the so-called “don’t say gay” bill for six years as a member of the state house before he was elected to the senate last November.

The bill is strongly opposed by equality advocates. Ben Byers of the Tennessee Equality Project told LBGTQ Nation that it “limits what teachers and students are able to discuss in the classroom. … It means they can’t talk about gay issues or sexuality even with students who may be gay or have gay family.”

Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, said current Tennessee law already prohibits such instruction by making it a misdemeanor to teach any sex education that is not part of the state board of education’s “family life curriculum.”

He proposed to amend Campfield’s bill to require the education board to study the issue and determine whether homosexuality is in fact being taught and, if so, to recommend what should be done about it.

But Campfield insisted that homosexuality is being discussed in classrooms, even thought the Tennessee Board of Education and Department of Education told the committee they’re unaware of it.

The Tracy amendment passed over Campfield’s objections. Ultimately, the committee adopted a measure declaring that the education board must study the issue and then adopt, as part of the family life curriculum, a ban on discussion of homosexuality in the same language used in Campfield’s bill.

The revised bill was approved 6-3, with opposition votes coming from Democrats. The law next goes to the full senate for a vote. 

Campfield, who is unmarried, is known as one of the most extreme and eccentric conservatives in a state that has plenty of both. He was ejected from a University of Tennessee football game for refusing to remove a “Nacho Libre” mask.

Truth Wins out note that, “Over the years, Campfield has proposed other controversial legislation, such as replacing the state’s food tax with a tax on pornography and requiring the state to issue death certificates for aborted fetuses. In 2005, Campfield compared the state’s Black Caucus to the Ku Klux Klan when they refused to let him join because he is white.”

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