Billboards Roast Tennessee Governor, Republicans on Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and GOP lawmakers are being mocked by a resident in a very visible way—billboards across the state condemning Republicans' efforts to restrict gender-affirming health care and other LGBTQ+ rights.

Several of the billboards show a photo of the Republican governor, who supported making drag performances state felonies, dressed as a female cheerleader during a powderpuff game. The image was taken from his 1977 high school yearbook.

Tennessee lawmakers have recently taken aim at the state's LGBTQ+ community by passing a slew of bills that restrict transgender rights, including bans on public drag shows and gender-affirming care for minors.

The state joined more than two dozen others trying to limit access to transgender health care for children as part of a conservative crackdown on events like "drag story hours" at public libraries.

Newsweek has reached out to Lee, the Tennessee legislature and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for comment via email and Facebook on Wednesday.

Zachary Heath Stamper, the 35-year-old entrepreneur and homebuilder behind the viral billboards, said the initiative started about a month ago in Nashville, the state capital. He created a GoFundMe to help with the cost of the billboards, which are in nine locations, he said. Since he started crowdsourcing on March 23, he has received more than 3,600 donations and nearly $100,000.

Stamper, who's from a small Tennessee town called Blountville, told Newsweek in an interview that he has no plans of stopping or removing the advertisements. He said as long as the funding keeps coming in, he plans to put up even more.

"Our plans are to just keep putting up billboards with issues we feel need addressed as a community," he said, adding that he has mainly received support and no serious complaints. Stamper said his goal is to "wake our state up and make them realize we have to vote, and we have to get involved in local politics or it's never going to get better."

Stamper, who has been documenting his billboard endeavor on TikTok, has garnered more than 70,000 followers and 1.2 million likes. He said the idea for the billboard's design came from the governor's yearbook photo, including the text "Hard Luck Woman," which is displayed on the signs. The phrase came from the caption of the yearbook photo, which shows Lee helping uphold the tradition of a "powderpuff football game," which involves male and female students crossdressing, according to NBC News.

Lee appeared angry over being confronted with the photo after the image resurfaced on social media platform Reddit.

"Conflating something like that to sexualized entertainment in front of children! Which is a very serious subject," Lee told reporters this year.

Stamper said the billboards all focus on Senate Bill 0001, which prohibits health care providers "from performing on a minor or administering to a minor a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor's sex."

"The new ones coming are going to be different topics as we come across them," Stamper said.

The ACLU slammed the bill, which goes into effect in June, as "taking away the freedom of families of transgender youth to seek critical health care." In a statement after the bill was signed last month, the group said the new law puts the "government in charge of making vital decisions traditionally reserved to parents."

Last month, Tennessee Republican legislators were ripped on Twitter after three children and three adults were killed in a mass shooting at a Nashville private school and the lawmakers chose to focus on preventing drag shows and access to health care rather than tackle gun-control reforms.