One of the reasons why we have 50 states in America is so that we have 50 little laboratories where we can run public policy 50 different ways and see which way works best. There are lots of ways to measure which states are best: tax rates, cost of living, crime rates, school choice, energy production, fiscal health, business climate, concealed carry laws, etc. And certainly social conservatives will want to live in a state that respects marriage and family.

Well, it’s hard to see how any state could ever beat Tennessee on that last criterion. Tennessee was already best in the nation on protecting the unborn. And their rock star attorney general Skrmetti recently won a landmark case protecting children from transgender activism at the Supreme Court. But now Tennessee is the best on marriage and family, too.

Here’s the latest news from Breitbart:

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed a resolution that designates June, considered “Pride Month” by some, as “Nuclear Family Month,” noting that the nuclear family “is God’s design for familial structure.”

The resolution states that “the nuclear family, consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children,” has “been the bedrock of society” since God created the world.

The nuclear family is also described as having been “the basic building block of Tennessee’s society throughout her formative years,” and as having “built the United States of America.”

It continues to affirm that “the nuclear family built the United States of America and created prosperity within our nation[.]”

The resolution also points out that “fatherless families are four times more likely to live in poverty than married-couple families,” and that children who grow up in homes without fathers “are ten times more likely to abuse chemical substances” and have mental health and behavioral problems.”

It’s very important to make these declarations, because they start conversations about these issues. In addition, secular leftists might want to move out of Tennessee, and Christians conservatives might want to move in. Tennessee has a lot of achievements in the area of social conservatism, like the one I mentioned earlier. And one other good thing is that declarations like this allow you to see what the secular leftist legislators really think. I bet a lot of rank and file Democrats think that Democrat legislators believe in marriage and family. But do they? Let’s see how they voted.

Rose send me an article about this from her favorite news source, Daily Wire, and they had some additional details that I thought were interesting. For example, they said this:

The resolution easily passed the Republican-dominated state legislature, clearing the House 72-18 last year and passing the Senate 26-4 last month.

I asked Grok who voted no, and Grok confirmed that all the no votes came from Democrats. Why is this interesting? Because a lot of non-traditional Democrat women fancy that “some day” they will all have handsome, traditional husbands who will protect and provide for them in a permanent exclusive marriage. They think that they deserve such a marriage, that their voting for Democrats is compatible with that end result. But the people these women vote for DO NOT believe in marriage. They DO NOT believe in husbands. They DO NOT believe in children. They DO NOT believe in homes, home-making, fidelity or permanence. I see so many non-traditional women complaining that the secular leftist men they are attracted to (for permissiveness) cannot be trusted to act like traditional men. They simply don’t understand that they can’t be non-traditional and vote non-traditional and just claim traditional men and traditional benefits after spending their whole lives voting against those men and those traditional male roles.

More from that article:

Leftist organizations expressed outrage after Lee signed the resolution last week. The LGBT activist organization GLAAD called Tennessee lawmakers who passed the resolution “clueless.”

That’s what leftists really believe – but somehow, leftist young women vote for these people and then act surprised when they cannot find a man who takes marriage and parenting seriously. There just isn’t a way for a self-centered narcissist who dismisses all the obligations of healthy relationships to attract a slave who will perform all of the traditional obligations of healthy relationships. The policies passed by Democrat legislators and lobbied for by Democrat-aligned activists destroy the supply of good men and make marriage risky and costly and unattractive to good men.

So what about Tennessee as a state?

Tennessee was among the first states to ban gender procedures on children, prohibit schools from hiding children’s gender “transitions” from parents, and crack down on drag queen performances in public or in settings where children are present.

I did an evaluation of Tennessee and other states when I got my green card and had to decide where to live. I had columns for Cost of Doing Business, Infrastructure, Economy, Business Friendliness, Cost of Living, Tax as a Percentage of Income, Family Structure, Laws against same-sex marriage, Pro-life protections for unborn babies, Self-defense against criminals, Concealed Carry laws, Fiscal Health, etc. I got the numbers from rankings by CNBC, Mercatus Center, Guns and Ammo, Pro-life groups, and so on. Overall, Tennessee came out #1, edging out Texas (#2) and Utah (#3). Since then, they have improved many of those numbers.

Let me show you some examples.

I used the 2015 Mercatus Center fiscal solvency ranking, which ranked Tennessee at #9. They did another ranking in 2018, and this time Tennessee was ranked #3. I did a quick check to see how Tennessee is doing today. One ranking has them at #3 and another ranking has them at #2.

I also rated all the states for gun rights and concealed carry. The Guns and Ammo rankings from 2015 had Tennessee at #23 for gun rights. In Guns and Ammo rankings from 2023, Tennessee is #8 for gun rights.

I also rated all the states for pro-life legislation. In 2015, Tennessee got ranked #18 by Americans United for Life. In 2025, Tennessee got ranked #6 by Americans United for Life.

So, if I had Tennessee at #1 in 2016 and since then many of their numbers have improved. The legislators in TN don’t understand the meaning of “good enough”. They hear about something bad that happened in another state or at the federal level and they think “we’ve got to pass a law so that it never happens here”. It’s important to live in a state that takes Christian and conservative values seriously. You don’t want to be paying taxes to secular leftists to rule over you and ruin your life. They are stupid people and so they don’t deliver good results.