Groomers’ old party

Say this for the Party of Ideas (TM), they’re very dedicated to exemplifying the truism that each and every one of their accusations is a confession:

Republicans in the Tennessee state legislature are so mad that the gays and theys can marry that their homophobic solution has opened up an even bigger can of worms. A pair of bills introduced in the state House and Senate (HB 233 and SB 562) seek to establish a new kind of marriage between only a man and only a woman in the state. Lawmakers in both chambers neglected to add any age of consent, opening the state up to child marriages, assuming said children have the right body parts.

“There is not an explicit age limit,” state Rep. Tom Leatherwood (R), who introduced the House bill, told WJHL11. The bill notably does outlaw marriages of incest, though, so it looks like eliminating age requirements from this new type of marriage was a choice.

Fraidy Reiss, founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, told Jezebel that this bill would open a “dangerous window” in Tenessee. “This bill would move Tennessee backwards, again,” Reiss told Jezebel by phone, noting that Tennessee only added a minimum age for marriage in 2018. “Moving it back to zero is obnoxious and offensive. What Tennessee should do is end all child marriage, no exceptions.”

Hoping that Roy Moore will open up a Creationism Museum in suburban Nashville, I guess.