<p>Gov. Bill Haslam</p>

By Richard Locker of the Knoxville News Sentinel

NASHVILLE — The state attorney general says passage of the transgender restroom bill pending in the state Legislature would put Tennessee's public K-12 schools and state colleges and universities at risk of losing their federal funding.

That's because, Attorney General Herbert Slatery says in an advisory opinion released Monday, the U.S. Department of Education interprets the anti-discrimination provisions of federal education law to require that transgender students be given access to restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identify instead of their birth gender.

House Bill 2414, which is awaiting further review in the House and Senate finance committees, would require transgender students to use the restrooms and locker rooms of the gender on their birth certificates.

Meanwhile, the state Senate gave final legislative approval Monday night to another bill strongly opposed by the LGBT community. House bill 1840, which allows private-practice counselors to refuse mental health services to people if it conflicts with their "sincerely held principles." That bill now goes to Gov. Bill Haslam, who can sign it into law, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature.

Slatery's opinion was publicly released soon after a national anti-discrimination group held a news conference in Nashville to oppose both the restroom and counseling bills.

Songwriter and producer Desmond Child and actor Chris Carmack, who plays a gay aspiring country music singer on the television show "Nashville," appeared at a news conference in the state capital hosted by the Tennessee Equality Project and GLAAD, formerly known as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, to condemn the two bills and encourage Tennessee's country music industry to come out against their passage.

Later Monday, country singer and actor Billy Ray Cyrus added his opposition to the bills, joining his daughter, Miley Cyrus, who announced her opposition earlier.

"I would feel negligent to not speak up. … I've witnessed this fight from the very beginning. I think everyone should be treated equal. We've come too far; we can't mess this up," Billy Ray Cyrus.

Carmack, who lives in Nashville, called the bills "unnecessary discrimination" and said the "human damage they can cause can never be recovered."

He spoke after Henry Seaton, an 18-year-old transgender senior at Beech High School in Hendersonville, said the bathroom bill creates an environment for bullying by requiring students like him — born female but identifies as a male — to more bullying.

"I am not a threat to anyone," he said.

Child, who has written dozens of hit songs, was more forceful in his criticism of the bill.

"These shocking and terrible bills are dangerous and reckless right-wing attacks. These bills are morally and spiritually corrupt to the core," said Child, who lives in Nashville with his husband, Curtis Shaw, and their twin sons.

Child said the bills were filed this year "because it's payback time for the Supreme Court making same-sex marriage the law of the land."

Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD president and CEO, said her group hopes to enlist more of Tennessee's entertainment industry to speak out against the bills before they become law, as the television and movie industry has against similar bills in Georgia and North Carolina.