COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
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HEADLINE HOMES
DECEMBER 5, 2024 | VOLUME 36 | NUMBER 48
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Lawyers detail arguments ahead of SCOTUS hearings Tennessee ban on transgender care for adolescents challenged in U.S. v. Skrmett HANNAH HERNER
Santa waves to children during Belle Meade’s inaugural Christmas parade on Dec. 2, 2023. PHOTO: HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS
Local holiday events on tap throughout December
Belle Meade Holiday Parade to take place on Saturday LOGAN BUTTS
A slew of festive holiday events are set to take place throughout December in and around Nashville. One of the area’s biggest winter attractions, Gaylord Oryland’s sprawling Christmas lights display, is already on display, as is ICE!, which features Frosty the Snowman and more than 2 million pounds of ice sculptures and decorations. Both are open until Jan. 4. Other notable Christmas light displays include the 10th annual Holiday LIGHTS
experience at Cheekwood (open until Jan. 5), custom-made silk lanterns at the Nashville Zoo’s Zoolumination, The Dancing Lights of Christmas in Lebanon (Jan. 4), and FrankTown Festival of Lights in Franklin (Dec. 31). Speaking of Franklin, the Heritage Foundation’s annual Dickens of a Christmas Festival, which transforms Downtown Franklin into a Charles Dickens-esque landscape, returns on Dec. 14-15. Nashville’s official Christmas tree lighting
takes place on Friday in Public Square Park. Christmas at the Tennessee Residence, where visitors can take a tour of the Tennessee Governor’s Mansion while it’s decorated for Christmas, is open Dec. 6-8 and 13-15. The Belle Meade Holiday Parade is also set for this weekend. The parade kicks off at Percy Warner Park on Saturday at 1 p.m., rain or shine, and continues through Belle Meade Boulevard to the Harding Place intersection. Make sure to also catch a glimpse of Santa and his >> PAGE 2
In the past three years, 24 states have instituted bans on gender-affirming care for minors. Before that, every state allowed various treatments for transgender youth with parental and physician approval — including hormones, puberty blockers and in some cases surgery. Chase Strangio, co-director of the American Civil Liberties Union LGBTQ & HIV Project, pointed out this fact during a Monday virtual press conference. This week, he will become the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court as part of United States v. Skrmetti. (Arguments in the case began Wednesday, Dec. 4.) “What Tennessee has done is to ban hormone therapy and puberty-delaying medication only when those medications are prescribed to allow adolescents to live, identify or appear inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth,” Strangio explained Monday. “The prohibition is not based on any sex-neutral criteria like risk or evidence of efficacy, but instead on whether a course of treatment departs from what is expected for people based on their sex at birth. We are simply asking the Supreme Court to recognize that when a law treats people differently based on their sex, the same equal-protection principles apply regardless of whether the group impacted by the law happens to be transgender.” The basis of the plaintiff’s argument is the 14th Amendment, also known as the Equal Protection Clause. Strangio, members of the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal, a Memphis physician and a >> PAGE 3
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