The city of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, adopted an ordinance that prohibits public displays of homosexuality.
According to Murfreesboro Municipal Code Section 21-72, “Sexual conduct” means “acts of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse, or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if such person be a female, breast.”
The June ordinance came as the city sought to remove pornographic children’s books from libraries.
To remove the materials, the city drew upon the definition of “harmful to minors.”
Something is considered to be “harmful to minors” when it “predominantly appeals to the prurient, shameful or morbid interest of minors,” “is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors,” and when “the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
Reporting from The National Pulse:
In October, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP), asking a federal court to declare the ordinance ‘unconstitutional’. According to the ACLU “…the Murfreesboro mayor and city manager engaged in a yearlong, concerted anti-LGBTQ+ campaign to chill TEP and Murfreesboro residents’ protected speech and expression, culminating in the city establishing an official policy prohibiting the issuance of permits to TEP.”
