A new voter ID law in Tennessee excludes student IDs as a valid form of identification– but no worries if you own a gun. Your gun permit will do just fine.
More from the Huffington Post on Tennessee situation and the broader voter ID trend:
In the last two years, Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed dozens of bills that erect new barriers to voting, all targeting Democratic-leaning groups, many specifically aimed at students. The GOP’s stated rationale is to fight voter fraud. But voter fraud — and especially in-person fraud which many of these measures address — is essentially nonexistent.
None of the new laws blocks student voting outright — although in New Hampshire, Republican lawmakers almost passed a bill that would have banned out-of-state students from casting a ballot. (The leader of the State House, Bill O’Brien, was caught on tape explaining how the move was necessary to stop students from “basically doing what I did when I was a kid: voting as a liberal.”)
Feminist Philosophers 
Wow! Truly astonishing. Although there is one bright spot in all this… many of these voter suppression laws have been turned aside by the courts.
Leaving aside the relative merits of the Tennessee voter ID law, once one determines that there is going to be an ID verification requirement associated with activity X, should it seem even slightly remarkable that student ID cards would be unacceptable or that gun permits would be acceptable?
A lot of student ID cards are issued by private entities, and even the ones issued by Tennessee government universities look (to judge by images on the Internet) more like Costco cards than they do driver’s licenses. Tennessee gun permits, on the other hand, are issued by the same government department that issues driver’s licenses (the state’s Department of Safety & Homeland Security), and indeed are remarkably like driver’s licenses in terms of the counterfeiting countermeasures used and the amount of identifying information displayed on the card.
Yes Nemo, I think it is slightly remarkable. Perhaps even more than slightly. If you read the HuffPo article linked above, you’ll see that university ID’s issued to faculty at state schools are valid IDs for the purposes of voting, but student IDs (which generally look just the same, and are issued via the same process) are not.
It would be nice if celebrities like Sarah Silverman didn’t promote and normalize homophobia in order to object to alleged voter fraud prevention laws. (You only have to watch the video above for 8 seconds.)
Philodaria, assuming that’s true, it’s a question not of “Gun Permit v. Student ID” but of “Faculty ID v. Student ID” – and what’s remarkable still isn’t that student IDs *aren’t* accepted, but rather that faculty employment IDs *are*. What’s the point of the reference to gun permits in the OP title?
How is “lawmakers are trying to fuck you in your assholes” homophobic? I mean, anal sex is associated with gay males, but I don’t know how that translates into homophobia (side note: let’s not forget that some straight people/lesbians also engage in anal sex!). I think the negative connotation associated with the insult is supposed to be more like “undesirable politician is trying to have sex with you” rather than “undesirable politician is trying to have gay sex with you” [here we would have to assume that both the politician and recipient of the insult are male?]. The only reason the asshole is involved, it seems to me, is so that the insult may be applied to all sexes (asshole is also a fun word to say -___-). This would explain why I still find the comment insulting (in a non-homophobic way), even though I am gay, or rather, even though I enjoy anal sex–the idea of a republican trying to fuck you is creepy, no matter what your sexual orientation is!
The point is that the policies–and I’m happy to put aside the question of intentionality for the moment–have the predictable systematic effect that barriers to voting have been put in place for certain demographics that tends to vote a particular way. Gun owners tend to vote in another.
Just wondering why my previous comment has been stuck in moderation for so long?
Nemo, I have asked members of the blog to step in here. No one has. Issues are vastly complicated. Re your comment on the video: was Obama parodying Romney? If so, your taking him so literally is beside the point.
Speaking for myself, i think that your views are.largely not shared by us or our readers. I am unhappy about providing a forum for such views unless we try to challenge them. In my experience challenging you is a very lengthy task, because you won’t stop. I just don’t have the energy to take it on now.
Let me be completely clear. These are my views. I will have nothing to add to them. Mostly, I try to stick to situations where there is some chance of opinions shifting and getting closer to convergence.
The fact that Nemo is persistent and good at making her case means that we, who disagree with her, have to study harder or check our facts with more exactness.
Obama learned in the recent debate with Romney that “they” have convincing arguments on “their” side at times and that to defeat “them” politically we (I am on Obama’s side as, I imagine, most of the readers of this blog are) need to be on our feet.
If we don’t brush up on our debating skills (which is hard and not always pleasant work), we are going to lose not only TV debates, but also hegemony on so many important issues.
I am to the left of Obama, by the way and am not a U.S. voter.
I’m not going to deal with Nemo’s arguments here, because not living in the U.S., I don’t have the facts on this case, but I’m sure that some readers of this blog do.
Sw: you may have gathered that your last comment is being held in moderation. I want to assure you that in general you are a very valued commenter here.
Thank you for a candid and gracious response, Anne. I’m keenly aware of being a minority voice with respect to some issues of the day discussed here, with all that entails. I’m inclined to think that in areas where my views are largely not shared by the moderators or other commenters (let’s say, on certain aspects of voter ID in this instance), there’s little need to worry that those views will somehow face insufficient challenge; that tends to take care of itself, almost by definition, and in spades.
I do consistently try hard to respect the commenting policies, though.