Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee has declared his support for renaming Nashville’s airport for Dolly Parton, days after the beloved singer’s death.

“It is fitting that Nashville International Airport would bear the name of our state’s favorite daughter and greet travelers with the enduring legacy of Dolly’s music, generosity, faith, and kindness,” Lee wrote in a press release.

It’s a nice gesture. But it is also bitterly ironic coming from the man who signed America’s first ban on public drag shows in 2023. Lee’s record on LGBTQ rights is abysmal. He defended the right of faith-based adoption agencies to refuse adoption to same-sex parents, renamed Pride month “Nuclear Family Pride Month,” and has outlawed gender-affirming medical care for minors. Parton expressed a deep fondness for drag performers, and for LGBTQ people, while Lee called drag “sexualized entertainment in front of children” and tried to ban it from public spaces—thereby attempting to put his state’s hardworking Dolly Parton impersonators out of business.

Lee’s record of anti-trans rhetoric and action—signing a ban on........

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