Memo to the South: YOU ARE DUMB.
We've covered some of this ground before, but it keeps cropping back up. The South needs to clean up its shit if it wants to be seen as smart, sophisticated, modern, and non-sister-fucking by the rest of civilization.
Start in Tennessee, a state already ON THE LIST. Specifically, Rhea County. You may remember Rhea County as the home of the Scopes Monkey Trial, an event they commemorate each year with a festival. Apparently, an annual celebration of anti-evolution hysteria didn't make them seem backwards enough. Like Avis, they try harder in Rhea County, TN.
So the county commission voted, unanimously, to ask the state legislature if they could kindly* change the laws so that Rhea County could charge homosexuals with "crimes against nature". Oh, and they checked with their attorney general to see if there was a way to keep gays from living in the county.
Essentially, Rhea County is hoist on their own petard. By denying the idea of natural selection, they've failed to realize that all they need to do is keep being an entire county of backward, inbred gaybashers, and, with the possible exception of a few Log Cabin Republicans, all the gays would NATURALLY SELECT to stay the hell away from there.
And what's worse, they're pussies. A day later, after their leader was quoted in publications saying "We've got to keep them out of here", some of the commissioners are now claiming that they need a "clarification" of the measure. That they voted unanimously for. Seems they thought they were just endorsing the commonly accepted bigotry about gay MARRAIGE, not the less palatable bigotry against gays in general. Unfortunately for these commissioners, the state's recently enacted "No takebacks" law means they're stuck looking like jackasses.
And here's where we get to the crux of the matter. Remember, back after 9/11, when pretty much every single Muslim or Muslim-looking person was expected to individually and publically denounce what happened, under pain of being sympathetic to the terrorists? Well, I think the same standard needs to be applied south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Every time a county wants to kick out all the gays, or Miami police are found to be following and photographing rappers who visit "just in case", or anyone in Texas does... anything, really, everyone in the South, and everyone living in the North but with a twangy accent, has to publicly denounce their actions.
It's really the only way for the South to escape their horrible, unfair, stigma of deep-seated DUMB. Get crackin'.
*I do not know for a fact that the measure they voted on included the word "kindly". However, I have it on the highest authority (Andy Griffith as "Matlock", Andy Griffith as "Andy Griffith") that Southerners use "kindly" like I use "motherfucker", i.e., as punctuation.