Reaching Out, Touching Me, Touching You… WTF:
Like any state legislature dealing with 8 percent unemployment and thousands of its residents facing disenfranchisement, the Tennessee Senate is targeting the menace of underage hand-holding.
Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.
So the next time you see a parent walking through a crowd holding their child’s hand, recognize it for what it is- foreplay. Immediately alert the authorities about this predator.
Alternate title- Hand Jive
R Johnston
That really should have been the primary title.
Just Some Fuckhead
Sadly, that’s prolly the case in most of Tennessee.
Baud
Apparently, Tennessee was jealous of all the attention Arizona was getting.
Baud
Who can forget the orgy that was Hands Across America?
John Cole
@R Johnston: I was also thinking “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”
jl
Next they will take on the threat of atheist free love pedophile union teachers forcing their innocent charges to make Valentine’s Day cards in kindergarten.
PhoenixRising
Neil Diamond ear worm?
Curse you, Cole. May voles be visited upon you in the deepest dark of your REM cycle.
lacp
Hey, the Republicans promised jobs. Who knew they meant hand jobs?
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@John Cole:
There’s a lot of good possible titles here!
beltane
Why haven’t they outlawed dancing, skirts with hemlines above the ankle, and rock and roll music yet? Get on with it, nutters, you are amiss.
the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)
Speaking of Sweet Caroline, the Sox CRUSHED it at home today on the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park.
Back to trashing Tennessee. Really Tennesseans? Have you no shame? What the fuck over.
FlipYrWhig
The grabbing hands grab all they can. H/t Depeche Mode.
Martin
Wait, so when I tell my son to hold his little sisters hand when crossing the street, that means I’m promoting inçest?
Really?
Mark H
I like the question mark cursor.
JWL
Attention All Southerners: What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Joseph Nobles
Holding Hands and Choosing Stones
Just Some Fuckhead
Sweet Caroline may be more appropriate.
Chuck Butcher
Holding hands…
Kissing…
I suppose there is some kind of polite description for this that is accurate – it completley evades me.
John Weiss
Tennesseans suffered a collective brain fart a couple of years ago. Now, the consequences. I really feel for the Southern Beal.
My solution? Move from Texas to Oregon. There are plenty of crazy people here, but not so many.
R Johnston
@John Cole: “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” would have been a fantastic title, even better than “Hand Jive.”
The actual title’s fine, but I like your alternatives more.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Chuck Butcher: I don’t know anything at all about Tennessee’s abstinence program but if they don’t have cunnilingus in there, they should. It practically always leads to sex, in my experience.
wenchacha
“I don’t want to see anyone holding Daddy’s hand.”
janeform
Put your hand in the hand of the man…
Jesus angle.
Edited to be better.
Villago Delenda Est
@John Weiss:
One of the Crazy People in Oregon is a 24 year old teatard named Mathew Robinson, who is running in the Democratic primary for the 4th Congressional District seat held by Peter DeFazio. Robinson is the son of Art Robinson, who is running for the Republican nomination, and faced DeFazio two years ago in the general election, and is a certified Crazy Person, one who thinks the way to dispose of radioactive waste is to mix it in with the concrete used in house foundations. I am not making this up.
Alison
I guess in Tennessee, playing Pat-a-Cake is basically making a porno. Good to know.
The fuck is wrong with these people…
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
lay your hands on me.
jon bon jovi, the genteel pornographer.
Joseph Nobles
Next year: the abstinence-only curriculum will be amended to make 1.5 feet the accepted distance between two people in order to make room for the Holy Spirit.
Chuck Butcher
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I think you’re probably right, they may not be able to spell it though…
Punchy
If holding hands is so bad, whats to make of homecoming and prom? Can one dance with a lady? Or is it sluts aplenty?
handy
Man, first Tebow now this. Sorry Cole. These things happen.
The Moar You Know
Those fuckers must be seriously deprived. My definition of “gateway sexual activity” is when you’ve got a young lady bent over the rim of a jacuzzi with her bottoms off, because under those circumstances, sexual activity is fairly likely.
Not “holding hands”.
I’ll say this for Tennessee, though. Nashville has the nicest strip club I’ve ever been in.
S. cerevisiae
@Villago Delenda Est: I wish you were. Art is as nutty as they come, which shows even complete nutters can get a PhD. I just looked at the district borders and I am in the 5th due to a really fucked up borderline in Corvallis – WTF is the story with that?
MissWimsey
Seriously, is the lobotomy optional when you register as a Republican? Cause otherwise I am at a loss…
Bnut
Man, sometimes the rent I was paying in NYC almost looks good again. Somehow I thought Tennessee might be better than Alabama was, how stupid of me. Still love Nashville, but won’t be raising my kids here (once I have some).
Just Some Fuckhead
You know what else leads to sex? Naked twister.
Warren Terra
My song lyric suggestion is So Put Your Little Hand In Mine.
And I’ve got to say, this news brings a whole new perspective to the children’s game Red Rover.
handy
I guess that rules out Ring Around The Rosie.
Don K
It’s always good to have a reminder that, as moronic as the politicians are here in MI, it’s always worse in the South.
RalfW
For reasons having more to do with getting an excused absence from public high school than actual interest in the college itself, my UU parents and I visited Baylor University in Waco in 1981, my Junior year in H.S. I asked the very nice and very well scrubbed Baptist who led the campus life tour about having a fridge in a dorm room.
Absolutely forbidden. Because having dorm fridge may lead to drinking alcohol.
Right. An 18 y.o. Baptist might a) break Texas law and b) violate a basic tenet of the faith, all because 1.8 cubic feet in a dorm room is cooler than the rest of the space.
Honey, if he’s gonna break both of those rules, the Haier in the corner ain’t gonna be why…
Warren Terra
Also, as commenter S. cerevisiae says in the Whiskey Fire thread on this topic makes an excellent point:
After all, there are countries where an unmarried couple discovered to be holding hands could be dealt with quite severely indeed – Iran perhaps chief among them! Guess Tennessee passed that referendum blocking Sharia too soon …
HumboldtBlue
@Joseph Nobles: And fractions must be core curriculum, how else to ensure you don’t come into contact with 3/5ths of a person?
scav
So now I’m all confused about gloves. Are cloth gloves thus clothing for the naughty naughty foreplay enablers and rubber gloves contraception for same? Which would imply I don’t know what about doing the dishes by hand, let alone in mixed company.
Suffern ACE
Ok. So if allowing me to put my hand on her chest but not under her shirt has now been moved to third base, have we added bases? Are we now playing a different game. I think 21 would be a better analogy for the good kids of TN.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@S. cerevisiae:
Ol’ fArt is truly nutso, the old ‘commit to an institution for his own safety’ kind of nuts that we used to have before conservatives destroyed mental health services.
I bet his kids are pretty damned fucked up because ol’ Dad raised them in his image. I would love to hear what his son wants to do with nuclear waste…lol!
DeFazio has my vote and there’s no problem with that at all, especially in light of what the other side the aisle offers this corner of the state.
GregB
I believe the next legislative session will see a bill making reach-arounds a felony.
Joseph Nobles
Not to hold Hands; that is the Law. Are we not Abstinent?
Not to kiss on Lips; that is the Law. Are we not Abstinent?
Not to stare at Breasts; that is the Law. Are we not Abstinent?
Not to surf the Net for Porn; that is the Law. Are we not Abstinent?
Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Abstinent?
Cap'n Magic
What we are seeing is the direct result of Falwell and Robertson’s plans hatched back the late late 1970s and early 1980s to seize political control of the Republican Party, having been shoved out of the way by Johnson’s Great Society and the realization of most Southern Democrats that they’ve been fighting the last war for way too long. Their main plan was to filter up from the bottom (Falwell: “Get them saved, get them baptized, get them registered to vote”) in school boards and inch their way up to state houses and onto the National Stage. Their anti-Sharia law drives in various states lay bare the inconvenient fact that what Ramesh Ponuru said about having more in common (and taking sides with) with a turbaned Mullah than with Michael Moore.
Secrectly, I wish the Catholic Church (of the 1970s’s vintage-the current crop is too fascists) and Shia Islam (Ahmadinejad notwiststanding) would merge on the temporal plane as they have more in common with each other than their same-faith bretheren, who seem hellbent on bringing the End of The World.
scav
What about the pledge of allegiance and the hand over heart stuff? “Over” heart, yeah, come on, you’re pretty much fondling your own left boob and in public!
TenguPhule
So Religious Laying on of Hands is Orgy TIme?
TenguPhule
They’re frustrated that Rape is still a crime and decided to take it out on the rest of us.
Triassic Sands
Breathing.
Another gateway sexual activity.
The link in incontrovertible. It’s a well known fact that 100% of teens who have had sex engaged in breathing first.
Screw lefty kids, but my recommendation to all conservative kids is to stop breathing now, before something bad happens to you — something like kissing, hand-holding, or group sex with a bunch of middle-aged GOP Congressmen.
Bago
This is so incredibly stupid, I don’t even have a snarky comment.
Chuck Butcher
@Bago:
A Republican Facebook friend repeated stupid three times in a row about this… and then denied belonging to such a stupid Party… backing that stance with, yup, Mittens. I like the guy but he is a political nitwit – as you may have guessed.
gaz
It’s fascinating to me that somebody thought it might be a good idea to let a bunch of creepy old men (aka: GOP legislators) try to teach kids about sex.
What could happen?
Joseph Nobles
Turns out the actual bill doesn’t mention hand-holding or kissing. The basic idea about this “gateway sexual activity” term is not what to tell the kids, but what the teacher CANNOT tell the kids.
“Gateway sexual activity” is defined as “sexual activity that can lead to non-abstinent behavior.” Or some such legalese, I don’t have the bill open anymore. “Sexual activity” is defined in the bill as “sexual contact or something something something.” Sorry to be so imprecise.
It’s the term “sexual contact” that’s not defined at all.
If it gets back to the parents or the school board that the teacher encouraged any kind of sexual contact (by not excoriating other forms of birth control or whatever), then the teacher can be buried under the school next to where they grow the mystery meat. Out of an abundance of caution, a teacher might not even say something as simple as “kissing can’t lead to pregnancy”. That’s how I think the hand-holding and kissing gets into the interpretation. Hand-holding and kissing may just be slippery slopes right straight into the vagina, at least when the pregnant girl’s dad comes looking for the teacher that said it was OK.
I will note that the bill says contraception can be discussed (not demonstrated! just discussed), but the teacher has to wring his or her hands and bewail the very idea of using any such risky form of pregnancy prevention as condoms and the Pill.
jpe
@Joseph Nobles: this. The bill is crazy enough without having to claim even more craziness that isn’t actually in the bill.
Just Some Fuckhead
Know what else leads to sex? Me, naked with my boner sticking straight out. They should put pics of me in the abstinence curriculum.
redshirt
One in the hand leads to two in the bush.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Gotta hand it to them, just when you think they couldn’t possibly get any dumber…
gelfling545
What kind of miserable excuses for human beings are they trying to produce who are so afraid of any human contact? They claim their God created the world but they sure don’t like the way he did it, do they? I mean that whole messy sinful, biological sex thing. Looks like God got that one wrong. Really, the EPA needs to take a closed look at the air & water there.
El Cid
I am sick of all this sexually licentious display of entire uncovered faces and heads by women. Someone needs to act. It’s difficult for menfolk to carry on with their lordly lives while having to gaze upon the sexual temptation of a woman’s ear or chin. Women should protect their own purity by covering up.
Amir Khalid
@John Cole:
The Beatles also recorded that song in German, so I’d gone with Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand.
The Pale Scot
comment from the original article
what? how about we skip the gateway **** and you just blow me directly
gaz
@Villago Delenda Est:
There’s a far cheaper and more efficient way to dispose of this stuff.
Obama should just declare June to be national “Don’t Eat Radioactive Waste” month.
The wingers will take care of the problem, and as an added bonus we’ll have eliminated the lowest common denominator of our electorate (27% of them, to be precise)
Taylor
@Villago Delenda Est:
That was actually done by a house in my neighborhood, by a chemist living there in the 20s. Brought home some of the castaway nuclear waste from making radium dials for watches.
I found this out one day when I walked by and saw guys in space suits demolishing the house.
I was pushing my kid in a stroller.
Not the south, but the state where we never met a chemical waste that could not be flushed down the toilet, and hey whaddyawhaddya….
hintn
@beltane: You’re talking about my legislature. They’re SLOW fer chrissakes, but they will get to it!