Tennessee Designates Pride Month as Anti-LGBTQ+ 'Nuclear Family Month'

Tennessee is changing Pride Month to 'Nuclear Family Month' in its latest attack on the LGBTQ+ community.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee speaks in August | Image: Bill Lee’s Facebook page

Last Thursday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed House Joint Resolution 182, officially designating the month of June as “Nuclear Family Month” in the state. The resolution, which first passed the House last year before stalling in the Senate, marks the latest attack by Tennessee on same-sex couples and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole.

Its purpose is made rather explicit. Aside from deliberately targeting Pride Month, HJR 182’s language is blatantly anti-LGBTQ+ from start to finish. In its first sentence, the resolution defines the “nuclear family” as “consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children” and labels it “God’s design for familial structure.” It then shifts to creationist language, asserting that the ‘nuclear family’ “has been the bedrock of society since the creation of the world.”

And immediately, the mention of adopted and fostered children sticks out. In making the exception for straight couples without biological children, it becomes clear that the definition is really only meant to exclude same-sex couples.

The implication that same-sex couples aren’t families doesn’t end there. A few sentences later, the resolution brings up misleading statistics to provide reasons why this specific idea of the ‘nuclear family’ must be protected, saying that children from ‘fatherless families’ are more likely to live in poverty and have addiction and mental health issues. As part of this, it also mentions that “eighty-two percent of shooters were raised in an unstable family environment or without both biological parents together.”

The resolution’s wording is meant to suggest that having LGBTQ+ parents is bad for kids.

This wording is intentional, and it’s made to suggest that children from same-sex households face significant challenges. Of course, it goes without saying that this idea is false: research has repeatedly shown that children raised by same-sex couples are not disadvantaged in any way.

After this, HJR 182 takes aim at more things that the GOP opposes, proclaiming that “Tennessee's values do not align with the humanistic, globalist ideologies of the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and like-minded organizations that fight for population control through the means of promoting sterilization and abortion practices.” Here, it seems likely that the term ‘sterilization,’ beyond being a reference to contraception, is also meant as a thinly veiled attack on gender-affirming care—something that many Republicans have repeatedly called ‘castration.’

Finally, the resolution asserts that “the nuclear family is God's perfect design for humanity and is aligned with the long-held traditional values of Tennessee” before declaring that “the nuclear family is under attack in our beloved State and nation.” This rhetoric isn’t new, and over the past few years, a number of Republicans have once again employed this exact same language when defending anti-LGBTQ+ positions. For example, in 2022, far-right House Republican Mary Miller (IL-15)—who authored a recent bill that aims to ban the mention of trans people in schools—justified her vote against the Respect for Marriage Act by saying it “attacks the traditional family.” Last year, Miller was also behind a bill that, if passed, would have similarly declared June as “Family Month.”

Nor is this Tennessee’s first time targeting same-sex couples. In February, the state’s House of Representatives passed a bill that allows businesses and individuals to ignore same-sex—but not opposite-sex—couples’ legally issued marriage licenses, though it’s worth mentioning that the proposal has since stalled in the Senate. And in other states, resolutions calling on the Supreme Court to overturn its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges have been introduced, and in Idaho, it even made it through one chamber. That said, last November, the high court notably refused to hear Kim Davis’ challenge to marriage equality.

Like Tennessee’s various anti-trans laws, House Joint Resolution 182 is meant to erase the state’s LGBTQ+ community. It takes Pride Month—a celebration of the LGBTQ+ fight for equality—and turns it into a dogwhistle while asserting that queer families don’t qualify as families. But even if it were ‘Nuclear Family Year,’ Republicans should know: no law, no bill, and no ‘nuclear family’ celebration will ever erase us.