Governor Haslam followed the Republican-lead Tennessee House and Senate (instead of leading) and signed a bill that would define holding hands and kissing as "gateway" behaviors to sex.  This bill would levy a fine of $500 to guest speakers in schools who encourage our teens toward "safe sex".  We wouldn't want that now would we?  With over 25 percent of teens contracting STD's and Tennessee ranking ninth in the nation for teen pregnancy, we wouldn't want them to know how to protect themselves from such?  I guess Tennessee wants to be number one. 

The fact is that this type of education should be done in the home by parents but since that, like many other subjects, are not addressed where they should be these subjects often fall on the schools.  To fine teachers and counselors for giving our teens good advice on how to protect themselves is self-defeating if not immoral.

Why the state government of Tennessee, lead by people who have nothing better to do in the face of budget and infrastructure issues in this state, spends their time and the peoples' money worrying about such issues is beyond me.

This is yet another idiotic law introduced and passed in Nashville that makes us the laughing stock of the nation and the world.  Our governor has shown no sensible leadership on any of these social issues and I hope thinking people will remember this when voting.  The governor's website has a slogan, "Moving Tennessee Forward."  He just moved us backward by about 100 years.

Further, I find it interesting, if not hypocritical, that these "small government" politicians are increasingly in our bedrooms, bathrooms, and doctors offices.  Instead of "small government" they're looking and feeling more like the Taliban every day.

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t's so much easier to solve non-problems than real ones.  It's so much easier to pass feel-good legislation in some pathetically lame effort to appeal to your base than it is to actually address the problems facing most former middle-class individuals. It's so much easier to prance around claiming how you are saving all of us from ourselves, while essentially doing nothing but playing a tune on the fiddle as Rome burns.  

I have a great idea:  we could make boys and girls go to completely different schools.   Furthermore, we could keep them totally separated until they are 21 and while we're at it,  just to be sure marriage stays sacred, we can outlaw divorce.  Yeah, that'll fix everything. 

No need for the senators and representatives to thank me.

Herb Montgomery 

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Mr. Dixon would get his information from reliable sources and not late-night TV and liberal pundits, he would know that there is nothing about kissing or holding hands in the the recent legislation concerning gateway sexual activity.   The bill signed by Gov. Haslam is intended to define what qualifies and what does not qualify as an abstinence-based educational lesson.

There are people and groups out there peddling oral sex, anal sex and masturbation as abstinence practices, and they are collecting government money to do it.  That is what the legislation seeks to prevent.

You may disagree with the legislation still, but read the bill and address the facts.

Bill Stiles