Rep. Jeremy Durham is co-sponsoring his state's anti-LGBT bathroom bill, but maybe he should keep his hands to himself first.

Brace yourselves, everyone — there is a hypocritical evangelical Christian Republican pushing an anti-LGBT law. I know, once you’ve caught your breath, continue reading.

State Rep. Jeremy Durham is one of the co-sponsors of Tennessee’s new bathroom bill. The bill, much like the law just signed into the books in North Carolina, would require students in the state to use the restroom designated for their birth gender. Social conservatives all over the country have seemed to shift their focus from keeping the uppity gays single to keeping the uppity transgender people constipated. But here’s the thing about Durham — he’s a handsy perv.

Tennessee’s Speaker of the House actually had to banish Durham to separate building because of ongoing complaints of sexual harassment. Yes, you read that right. The guy who ostensibly wants to treat trans people like they are second class citizens because of some idiotic belief in an increased risk of sexual assault and/or perversion, is indeed a guy who can’t keep his hands off women. Hmm. Maybe Durham should sponsor a bill requiring smarmy politicians to use an outhouse instead of any bathrooms at all.

Per The Tennessean:

Slatery’s memo, dated Wednesday, states that the investigation has included interviews with 34 people. Information gleaned from those interviews revealed Durham: “Occupied a superior position of power to the women.”

“Obtained personal contact information from the women under the guise of legislative business or another legitimate reason.”

“Initiated contact about non-legislative matters and attempted to meet the women alone.”

“Usually involved alcohol in his interaction with women.”

“Made inappropriate comments of a sexual nature or engaged in inappropriate physical contact with some women.” (source)

Durham strikes me as the kind of Republican who would have lead the charge against Bill Clinton’s blowjob proclivities, because just like Denny Hastert, he’s persecuting a group of people over his perceived morality conflicts with them, while he is guilty of unabashed moral turpitude himself. Isn’t it amazing that this guy is a co-sponsor of a bill that is written because of a mistaken belief that giving trans people bathroom access opens up the door to sexually inappropriate and downright criminal behavior while he is himself being thrown out of a building for inappropriate and potentially criminal sexual behavior?

It’s a refrain that’s becoming ubiquitous to the point of hyperbole. A rock-ribbed, evangelical Christian castigates a group of people who he presumes to be sexually deviant, while being a sexual deviant himself. You can’t write a more pluperfect example of hypocrisy if you tried.

People like rep. Jeremy Durham should have no place in a legislative body. We’re not talking about someone whose sexual behaviors are reciprocated by adults but found to be “icky” by others. That’s something I could defend. But Durham is just a potent cocktail of garden variety hypocrisy and genuine sexual inappropriateness (to put it extremely charitably).





If these bigoted, anti-LGBT laws weren’t bad enough for how they, as my pal Manny put it, turn LGBT+ people into the new Jim Crow, that would be one thing. But they do just that, and top of it, they’re written by people, like Durham, who have no business sitting in judgment of anyone, no matter how ignorant they are of transgender issues. The kicker of course is that as has been seen in North Carolina, there can and will be stiff economic penalties for any state that enacts these horrid laws.

So if they’re not fiscally prudent, and not written from any genuine concern for people’s safety, and they’re written by horribly hypocritical people…just what is the point of these bathroom laws? That’s a question I’ll let all of you answer for me, because nothing I come up with makes any rational sense.