Like any state legislature dealing with 8 percent unemployment and thousands of its residents facing disenfranchisement, the Tennessee Senate (Nashville, Tennessee, USA) is targeting the menace of underage hand-holding. Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.
Since the bill specifically bans teachers from “demonstrating gateway sexual activity”, educators would be prohibited from even demonstrating what hand-holding is. Breaking these laws could result in a lawsuit, as Hunter from Daily Kos notes: If your teacher teaches you anything about sex that isn’t specifically on the approved curriculum, like demonstrating “holding hands” for the class instead of quietly tsking about the dangers it poses, they can be sued.
Still, this anti-hand-holding push may only be the second-worst bill passed in Tennessee this month. Nearly a century after the Volunteer State played host to the Scopes Monkey Trial, the legislature has now enacted a new law allowing educators to teach creationism alongside evolution.