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Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day: John Ragan- 2023 Update [1]
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Date: 2023-03-15
It was in both 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled John Ragan, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives first elected in… yes, the 2010 Tea Party Wave. While in 2012, he barely survived re-election with 51% of the vote, in 2016, he won re-election to a fourth term with 66% of the vote. FRED had John Ragan on its radar for quite some time, after he made himself a bit of a laughing stock back in 2013 for sponsoring his “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Tennessee, HB 1332. While it would have been enough of an eyebrow-raising piece of legislation for its desire to forbid public school teachers from saying “gay, lesbian, transgender, or bisexual” in classrooms as a piece of legislation from ALEC, but that Ragan amended the bill a few times in Tennessee to change its language requiring teachers to report gay students to their parents for mental health counseling (which is messed up enough because homosexuality stopped being classified as a mental disorder four decades earlier in 1973).
After being hit with widespread criticism that he was anti-gay, Ragan released a statement that his legislation was “pro-mental health”, only drawing the ire of the LGBTQ community even more. It of course, died in committee every time he tried to get it passed. In 2014, Ragan began speaking out against gay couples that he felt were leaving Tennessee to get married out of state to come back home and enjoy cheaper insurance premiums as married couples. Apparently, that’s the only reason same sex couples wanted to be married, in his bigoted eyes. As of 2017, Ragan hasn’t mellowed out much, sponsoring legislation in at the start of the new session to try and limit the terms “mother and father” to exist only in households with opposite sex parents in an end-around to try and argue against gay adoption.
He also has sponsored a bill that would require those on work visa to have their driver’s licenses label them as “alien” so law enforcement could more easily identify them as immigrants or undocumented immigrants. While several balked at the term “alien” being used, they also pointed out that expiration dates on Tennessee driver’s licenses already expire to coincide with the expiration of their work visas. John Ragan wasn’t going to let that fact change his opinion, instead invoking 9/11 as the justification for his anti-immigrant legislation. When he failed to whip up support by invoking the tragedy, he finally pulled his legislation. Ragan’s overall voting record is a hot bed of nuttery, including support voter GOP voter suppression bills, his co-sponsorship of HJR 587, a resolution against the United Nations Agenda 21 treaty, for fears from hard-right conspiracy theorists that it’s a plot to establish global domination, and his vote for HB 3808, a bill written to gather “abortion statistics” that made many critics realize the data could help identify women going to clinics to seek abortions. He co-sponsored the GOP’s attempt to block the Medicaid Expansion in Tennessee, and voted for bills to prevent Civil War monuments from being renamed on multiple occasions.
John Ragan was, sadly, re-elected in 2018 with 61% of the vote. He went to work in Nashville to do… what else? Attack the rights of LGBTQ people, this time sponsoring legislation that critics have noted sounds a hell of a lot like he’s trying to get transgender citizens arrested on indecent exposure charges for using a public bathroom. That and hosting town halls where he told a gay man why he and his husband shouldn’t be allowed to adopt, or the mother of a transgender youth should be denied taking hormonal treatments that would block puberty.
In 2020, he responded to a constituent who asked him to denounce Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Ragan responded first by defending Forrest. thusly:
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