John Ragan

Two bills related to transgender bathroom use advanced in the state that advocates say will lead to “harassment of transgender people.”

Lawmakers removed elements targeting transgender people, but the trans community isn’t out of the woods just yet.

The state would classify it as “indecent exposure.”

Following weeks of mounting pressure from LGBT advocacy groups, it was an online campaign initiated by an 11-year-old gay student that finally compelled the education lobbying group StudentsFirst to rescind it’s “Education Reformer of the Year” designation awarded to Tenn. state Rep. John Ragan, a proponent of the state’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Marcel Neergard, an 11-year-old gay student from Oak Ridge, Tenn., is speaking out against the state’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and one of its leading proponents in the Tenn. state House, Oak Ridge Rep. John Ragan.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A measure that would have forced schools to tell parents if their children have talked to a teacher or counselor about being gay has failed this session.

NASHVILLE, Tenn — Another new version of Tennessee’s Classroom Protection Act, more commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, would require teachers to send gay students to see a psychiatrist.

According to Tennessee lawmaker Joe Ragan, gay “feelings” can be controlled by “mentally healthy adult human beings,” and questioned, “Should society avoid disapproving of pedophilia, prostitution, murder, etc., because practitioners of those behaviors may commit suicide at higher rates?”