DAYTON, Tennessee, March 19 (AFP) - Officials in a rural Tennessee county held a five-minute emergency session to scrap an anti-gay resolution that earlier this week triggered a national furor, but failed to quash the controversy.
But the controversy was far from over, since many Rhea County residents, including Crystal Lawson, found the wording of the rescinded motion was not the one Fugat proposed Tuesday night.
In Tuesday's meeting, Fugat said: "What is pertaining to homosexual marriages that's going on across our country, I'd like to make a motion that those kind of people cannot live in Rhea County or abide in Rhea County. If they are caught in Rhea County living together as such, they should be tried for crimes against nature.
All eight members of the panel supported Fugat, but some later disavowed their votes, saying they thought they were voting for a ban on gay marriage.
On the other hand, I view it as a good sign that they clearly think it's preferable to have people think that they're too stupid to be let out without a minder than it is to have people know that they're flaming bigots.
For a long time, predujice directed at gays has been the last expression of bigotry that people have felt comfortable being open about. Feeling shame, feeling the need to hide their bigotry, preferring to look like abject morons as opposed to owing up to their bigotry, that's all a step forward.
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