Tennessee! Motto: If You're A Man Wearing A Skirt You Better Be A Scotsman

We're coming to you today from the Good News, Bad News Department here in the marbled halls of IM Central. GNBN is a division of the Split The Difference Corporation, a wholly owned subsidy of Take What You Can Get, Inc.

Sen. Bo Watson on Thursday withdrew the Senate version of a controversial House measure requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms and dressing rooms that match their birth gender.

Well, what do you know? A state legislator that seems to have a fully functioning tolerance gland. And in Tennessee no less. Reason to hope that the American experiment can survive this current  spate of government of the voices in our heads, by the voices in our heads and for the voices in our heads? Ah, not so much. Look what he's up against: 

Rep. Richard Floyd introduced the bill after reading a news story about a Texas woman who said she was fired from Macy’s after stopping a male teen dressed as a woman from using a dressing room. “It could happen here,” Floyd said. “I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry.

Now, for those of you who don't speak Bubba, we have to tell you representative Floyd is deadly serious in his threat. How do we know? Because he didn't end his little testosterone fueled chest thump with "Bless his heart." No matter how violent, how homophobic, racist or xenophobic something a hillbilly says is, if he or she ends the remark with "Bless his heart" they only mean it in the best way possible.

To further underscore the seriousness of representative Floyd's concern that the people crowding into his daughter's dressing room with her are not of the same gender, take a look at his photograph:

As you can see, aside from the ill fitting dentures, representative Floyd is a senior citizen with a bit of a paunch. In other words, his best mud hole stomping days are behind him, and if events were to compel him to engage in sustained mud hole stomping at this stage of his life, well, let's just say it wouldn't be long before we were entering the myocardial infarction zone, but it's a price he's willing to pay to assure the person in the stall next to his wife isn't swinging anything other than a purse if you get our meaning.

“Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk,” he said. “We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts..."

Well put representative Floyd. If we let these people freely roam the street unharassed by the more manly elements of American society, what's next, unisex bathrooms? Skin care products for men? Hair gels? What are we, France?

Jonathan Cole of the Tennessee Equality Project dubbed it the “Police the Potty” bill.

 OK, OK let's not lose our perspective here. We mean, representative Floyd is only one guy--admittedly a guy with some issues--but only one guy with one Bill. To be sure a guy so manly even his name is Dick, but it's not like the Tennessee legislature is dealing with this sort of thing every day.

Cole accused state lawmakers of “proposing and passing some of the most homophobic and transphobic bills in the country — it is, after all, the state that passed HB600 stripping local jurisdictions of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] antidiscrimination provisions.”

Well, yeah, there is that too.

He also cited two other pending bills, one that exempts schools from an antibullying law when students’ criticism is based on their religious beliefs. Critics call it the “license to bully” bill.

 Um...well...uh...

Another measure, dubbed as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, prohibits teachers from discussing homosexuality in kindergarten through eighth-grade classrooms.

Oh crap. Is this a legislature, or a closet?